Book #21: Brazil - The Summer Prince by Alaya Dawn Johnson

Round the World Wednesday! Is it still Wednesday anywhere in the world? No? Oh well. Today is Honorary Wednesday.

The Summer Prince is another of those books that evokes a place so viscerally that you think I want to go there, even if the 'there' is a few hundred years in the future, a parallel world or some undefined historical time. So, I'd like to go to Brazil now. I want to see Palmares Três, the jewel on the bay, the pyramid city of lights. Though possibly not with the bloodshed that goes with it.

The book is set in Brazil at least four hundred years in the future, where everything is life and death, love and hate, moving forward and holding back. The main character, June, is a young artist in a city ruled by grande women, where anyone below the age of thirty is not taken seriously. Every five years, the populace elects a king, and after a year of his rule, he chooses the next queen and is sacrificed. The system is quite logical, really - someone who is about to die is less likely to be swayed by politics.

It's an election year, but not just any election year. This year the king will be a waka, under thirty, and his sacrifice will serve only to continue the reign of the incumbent queen. He will have no true power to choose another queen, but for a year he will be the most priveleged of the youth of Palmares Três.

June votes for Enki, and is ecstatic when he wins. She's already half in love with him, but Enki falls in love with her best friend Gil and she's not quite sure where she stands. She throws herself into making Art, recognising that Enki is as much an artist as she with the way he moves and influences the crowds. They become collaborators on sensational projects, and Art is at its best when it creates a sensation. Or a revolution.

Enki is hurtling headlong towards death, but he is the most vital character in all senses of the word. He helps June understand what's important, and the reader along with her.

Palmares Três is most desperately, incredibly alive, with its dancing wakas and ritual sacrifice. I love the way Johnson communicates that, with the blocos and the graffiti and the secret ninja art projects. I also love the way she weaves Portuguese into the text, making it clear that English is a foreign language to her characters.


Any books you know and love that are set in Brazil?

On the silver screen

This week has been much like many other weeks in the scheme of things (apart from the fact that the new series of Merlin has reawakened my Merlin obsession. When will it end??? Maybe when I get the second and third series on DVD, which weren’t available in NZ but are available here. Yes, that will stop it). I had a lull between books to read in the tube, so for once I took the free newspaper they give out and actually read it.

It’s worth reading, it turns out. I found an article about a late night at the National Portrait Gallery, themed on the golden (or silver) age of film. They had interesting speakers and music and live photoshopping of photos, and were offering to make you up as a 40s film star.

This was something I was going to.

I was a bit suspicious that half of London might want to go too, so I arrived forty minutes before the night opened and stood in a long queue (people really do seem to love queuing. I waited ten minutes for an ATM the other day because people had somehow convinced themselves that one of the two ATMs was out of order. It wasn’t. It was just that they were only queuing behind one of them, and nobody was brave enough to get out of line. Me included...). There were lots of people who’d really dressed for the occasion in vintage dresses and hats, as well as some who had just taken the opportunity to dress up as anything – one woman was dressed in a medieval gown and cloak.

Staff came down the line and gave out appointments, but there were rather more people than they’d expected and by the time they got to me they were only handing out lipstick appointments. This was better than nothing, so I took my appointment card and wandered around the gallery until my makeup artist was free.

I learnt some new Photoshop techniques from the touch-up artist, and watched the photographers train people to model like film stars. Then I received some ruby-red lips and got lost in a few galleries before finding a science tour about immortality and slowing the aging process, which was very interesting.

Maybe I’ll be a forties film star when I grow up. I can join my friend Fifties Film Star! Who wants to be Sixties Film Star?