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Title details for The Shape of Bones by Daniel Galera - Available

The Shape of Bones

A Novel

by Daniel Galera
Charlie Anson
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available
"A book of visceral and tender beauty whose echoes persist long after the final page." 
—David Mitchell, author of The Bone Clocks
A coming of age tale of brutal beauty and disarming tenderness from one of Brazil's most exciting young novelists, an author writing in the footsteps of "Roberto Bolaño, Jim Harrison, the Coen brothers and...Denis Johnson" (The New York Times)

A young man wakes up at dawn to drive to the Andes, to climb the Cerro Bonete—a mountain untouched by ice axes and climbers, one of the planet's final mountains to be conquered—as an act of heroic bravado, or foolishness. But instead, he finds himself dragged, by the undertow of memory, to Esplanada, the neighborhood he grew up in, to the brotherhood of his old friends, and to the clearing in the woods where he witnessed an act that has run like a scar through the rest of his life.
Back in Esplanada, the young man revisits his initiation into adulthood and recalls his boyhood friends who formed a strange and volatile pack. Together they play video games, get drunk around bonfires, pick fights, and goad each other into bike races where the winner is the boy who has the most spectacular crash. Caught between the threat of not being man enough, the desire to please his friends, and the intoxicating contact-high of danger, the boy finds himself following the rules of the pack even as the risks mount. And in a moment that reverberates and repeats itself in new ways in his adulthood, his fantasies of who he is and what it means to be a man come crashing down, and life asserts itself as an endless rehearsal for a heroic moment that may never arrive.
From one of Brazil's most dazzling writers, The Shape of Bones is an exhilarating story of mythic power. Daniel Galera has written a pulse-racing novel with the otherworldly wisdom of a parable.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    August 15, 2017

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781524776992
      • File size: 148887 KB
      • Duration: 05:10:10

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      June 19, 2017
      A strikingly potent coming-of-age story set mostly on the streets of Esplanada, a rapidly changing area in northeast Brazil in the early 1990s, Galera’s novel moves seamlessly between past and present to deliver a moving portrait of a man haunted by the ghosts of his youth and a senseless tragedy that would change the course of his life. The unnamed narrator in the present day, known only as Hermano in flashbacks to his childhood, is visiting the old neighborhood en route to pick up a friend for an ambitious and dangerous rock-climbing expedition that “promised to be the biggest adventure of his life.” But upon entering Esplanada in the early morning, he is struck by the return of a crippling shame that he thought he had left behind long ago. The past catches up to the present as he intervenes in a gang conflict eerily reminiscent of one that he had fled from as an adolescent. Examining masculinity and the responsibility we have to others in violent yet hauntingly intimate scenes, Galera (Blood-Drenched Beard) illuminates the murky spaces between who we believe ourselves to be and who we really are. The result is a harrowing, expertly structured work of fiction.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      A young Brazilian doctor finds himself drawn back to his old neighborhood in Esplanada, where he encounters memories of his youth that continue to trouble him as an adult. Narrator Charlie Anson provides the voice for the introspective journey of "Hermano," as the young man is called by his daredevil friends. Anson's variations for the dialogue of the many characters help to differentiate them, which is important in a work that makes frequent segues from past to present and back again. While Anson's narration doesn't fully convey the gravity the author intends during this story's more serious events, it is well paced and easy to listen to. S.E.G. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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