IT BEGINS WITH GREAT PROMISE. Mon-ica Ali sets her second novel after Brick Lane far away—in the yet-to-be-discov-ered- by-tourists village of Mamarossa in Portu-gal— where we meet an 84-year-old peasant encountering death: “At first he thought it was a scarecrow.” As Joao comes outside his home in “the tired morning light to relieve his bladder, blessing as always the old Judas tree”, he sees the dark shape in the woods, which turns out to be his best friend hanging from a tree.

As Ali tells us, Joao and Rui were seventeen and hungry when they first met, both in search of work—and love, which, sigh, unlike Broke-back Mountain, will stay unrequited. But then the worst possible thing happens. Just when you crave to know more about Joao and Rui’s past, Ali appears to lose interest in them, stray-ing on to chronicle the lives of people not half as interesting—barring a handful like the over-the- edge Potts family—as J & R.

Over the next eight chapters, we are forced to meet a brood. From English writer Stanton who has fled to Mamarossa to overcome a lack of inspiration; the crazy English family of four, the Potts, who escape from trouble and land in some more (they make for a great ensemble: drunken father, straying, insect-bitten wife, lost-in-the-woods son and pregnant daugh-ter); local cafe-owner Vasco who goes into a Hamletian dilemma over cake (to eat or not to eat) to mourn his dead American wife; the youth of the village who yearn to leave home like beautiful Teresa and so forth.

... contd.