A Swedish consul in Rio de Janeiro

“This looks like the setting for a Latin American novel,” cries one of the characters in A Castle in Ipanema, the second novel by Martha Batalha (Recife, 1973), who was a journalist and editor before dedicating herself fully to writing.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
06 August 2022 Saturday 22:06
17 Reads
A Swedish consul in Rio de Janeiro

“This looks like the setting for a Latin American novel,” cries one of the characters in A Castle in Ipanema, the second novel by Martha Batalha (Recife, 1973), who was a journalist and editor before dedicating herself fully to writing. The sentence is the best description that one can make of this intense and vital volume, which covers a century of the history of a family, the Janssons, originally from Sweden and installed in Brazil, where the patriarch acts as consul.

Johan is a disproportionately tall man (“standing on tiptoe he could greet the neighbors on the second floor face to face”), who married Brigitta, a peculiar woman, one and a half meters tall, who listens to the voices that speak to him. and predict future events.

Together they will discover in Rio de Janeiro a remote space where they can settle: Ipanema. There they will be the parents of three children and they will order the construction of a sumptuous and eclectic castle where they will live and celebrate parties that the entire neighborhood will attend.

This is just the beginning of a story that progresses fast and torrential, full of events and descriptions, which page after page incorporates new characters until it approaches the year 2008. Ipanema begins as a lonely place where the three children will awaken to adult life after the appearance of Laura Alvim, the doctor's daughter.

The storms of the southwest wind will fill everything with sand from the beach, which the inhabitants of the area will later return to the sea. The climate will become dense due to the weight of unrequited love.

Of the three offspring of Johan and Brigitta, only Nil will remain in the city. His story will give way to that of his son Otávio and his wife Estela, and with them we will live the evolution of the country -the end of the dictatorship- and the social changes -class differences, television, feminism, homosexuality...Because Through the evolution of its characters, the book gathers local beliefs and customs, wealthy neighborhoods and favelas, political persecution, prisoners and torture... a Brazil that is opening up to democracy.

Halfway through the story one feels somewhat overwhelmed by the narrative exuberance, by the accumulation of episodes. Just then the rhythm calms down –or perhaps we have already got used to it– and the text calms down until the end. The flow flows to the mouth. Chance causes situations that seem to close circles – like the encounter in the Amazon – but, as in life, the figure is only complete when seen from the outside.

Batalha's work drinks from magical realism. In other recent novels, such as those by Sara Jaramillo or Lia Piano, we also recognized stories where nature and the characters went beyond the real and rational plane and where the oneiric was intertwined with reality.

In this novel it is to a greater degree and power because the plot is more ambitious. These novels coincide in presenting strong female characters, who act with determination and who aspire to change the course of their lives. Clarice Lispector, so vindicated, seems especially alive in the text. Ella Estela reads her chronicles in Jornal do Brasil.

We discover in a final note by the author that the Swedish consul existed a hundred years ago, as did the doctor Alvim, his neighbor in Ipanema. Batalha has raised a magical story in her footsteps, which, like her first work, The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão, has many elements to be made into a film. Rich in images and characters, it reflects the vital pulse of the members of the Jansson clan.