“Guests would arrive in armoured 4x4s or mud spattered jeeps, tanned men with bellies and moustaches, who chatted by the pool all weekend gripping beers and caipirinhas; stunning wives on sunloungers with tinted hair and manicured nails and cosmetically enhanced bodies, rotating in the heat like rotisserie chickens.”

Book Review:

Review by Guy Savage  (NOV 12, 2010)

The main character in James Scudamore’s novel Heliópolis is twenty-seven-year-old Ludo. Born in terrible poverty in a Sao Paulo Favela (shantytown), Ludo and his mother had the good fortune to come to the attention of Rebecca, the British, charity-minded wife of one of the city’s richest businessmen, Zeno (Zé) Generoso. Zé and Rebecca, who have one daughter, Melissa, formally adopted Ludo, and he has a privileged upbringing which comes with a price; he’s constantly reminded of his humble beginnings, his good fortune and how much he owes to his benefactors. Separated from his mother who remains as the cook at Zé’s country estate, Ludo has no self-identity. His life is shaped by the desires of the Generoso family, and while he may be the adopted son, he’s little more than a trained house-serf.

The novel explores the vast disparities between the rich and the poor, and just how the characters adapt to their respective roles in this overwhelmingly non-static society. To Zé, it’s simple: “there is no such thing as a middle class, and no such thing as a non-criminal underclass.” It’s “us” (Zé and his fellow plutocrats) vs. the rest of Brazil. Zé and his family live into a fortified compound within the exclusive Angel Park community. Life in Angel Park has a surreal quality, but at the same time the wealthy who sprawl inside these impregnable walls live with incredible paranoia when it comes to the issue of security. Here’s Zé’s mansion:

“The house he flies home to every weeknight is a fortified compound, buffered by terraced ponds and beds of hostile spike shrubs. His self-watering lawns are patrolled by two pure-bred fighting mastiffs, which roll over on demand for Zé and his family, but would take the leg off an uninvited guest. His palm trees contain motion-sensitive cameras connected to the hub of technology in the guardhouse; if you disturbed so much as a blade of his grass, Zé would know about it. And that’s just the beginning. Before you even get to the house you have to enter the compound itself, which is defended by bundles of oiled razor wire and a tooled up crew that resembles a private army rather than a team of security guards. It would take a thief with Special Forces training to get past the outer walls, let alone breach Zé’s last line of defence, and even if you did, you wouldn’t find him—he’d be sealed in his tungsten panic room long before you got in.”

Heliópolis is actually the name of the largest favela in Sao Paulo, but for this novel the term could refer to the lives of the extremely wealthy set–people who never travel at street level, but who instead move from building to building via helicopter:

“Melissa’s father, Zé Fischer Carnicelli, hasn’t been down to street level in the city for over fifteen years. He lives in a gated community of 30,000 inhabitants, way out of town, and is flown there to his downtown office every morning in a helicopter that has the word Predator painted graffiti-style over its nose, along with gnashing teeth and a pair of evil yellow eyes. He’s approaching retirement, but he still keeps regular office hours. A chauffeur drives him between his house and the helicopter, then back again in the evening. During the day, he might hop to another high-rise to meet someone for lunch, or to attend an afternoon meeting, but he never touches the pavement. It’s not just a question of safety; if he went by car he could get snared in a traffic jam lasting hours. Nobody who’s anybody gets driven to work in the city these days.”

When the novel begins, Ludo works in a nebulous “communications” company in Sao Paolo. His repulsive boss, Oscar, a lifelong friend of Zé’s, vacillates when it comes to his attitude to Ludo. On one hand, Ludo seems to enjoy “special treatment” as an employee who is hired through strings pulled, and yet there are moments when Oscar zones in on Ludo and humiliates him in front of a room full of business associates. Ludo typically arrives late to work, and spends large amounts of time snoozing curled around the base of the toilet.

The novel begins with Ludo sleeping with his adoptive sister and sometime mistress, Melissa. She’s now married to Ernesto, the plump well-meaning son of another wealthy Brazilian family. Apart from the money connection, it’s an odd match. Ernesto, who works interminably on an ever-elusive PhD, is obsessed with the plight of Brazil’s underclass, and while he interviews people for his Sisyphean project, his wife Melissa lives like a princess in a tower and spends lavishly at the most exclusive shops.

The novel is divided between the past and the present. A large portion of the book details scenes of Ludo’s childhood as he and his mother jump into action for the Generoso family every weekend. Ludo and his mother live at Zé’s country estate which is a sort of exclusive Disneyland for Zé, his friends and the business associates he invites for the weekend. No expense is spared for these mind-boggling weekends of endless gluttony and pleasure. Ludo’s present focuses on a new advertising campaign geared towards the inhabitants of the favelas. Advertising executives vie to provide the slogan for the new supermarket chain geared for the poorest of Brazil’s inhabitants. These scenes underscore just how out of touch Brazil’s upper echelons are with the rest of the country.

Heliópolis offers fascinating insights into Brazilian life and the vast chasms between the rich and the poor, and Ludo is a bridge figure who straddles both worlds. He’s useful to his masters and yet he doesn’t fit in either world–not the skyscrapers and the country estates or the fetid squalor of the favelas. Ludo fails to connect with anyone on any meaningful level. He even unintentionally manages to patronize the office cleaner, and it’s through this relationship that it becomes clear that Ludo has no place in society.

Heliópolis was longlisted for the 2009 Booker prize. Not that I care–the books I like never win. I liked Heliópolis but it wasn’t perfect. Ultimately there’s something unsatisfying with the tale. Richly evocative when it comes to locations and atmosphere, many of the characters fail to connect as living, breathing human beings, and its denouement feels somewhat contrived.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 4 readers
PUBLISHER:	Europa Editions (October 20, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Guy Savage
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	Not Yet
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	James Scudamore
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Also set in Brazil: Buried Strangers by Leighton Gage

Bibliography:

• The Amnesia Clinic (2006; January 2007 in US)
• Heliopolis (2009; October 2010 in US)

“Kavita spent the next two days curled up on the woven straw mat on the floor of the hut. She did not dare ask what had happened to her baby. Whether she was drowned, suffocated, or simply left to starve, Kavita hoped only that death came quickly, mercifully. In the end, her tiny body would have been buried, her spirit not even granted the release of cremation. Like so many baby girls, her first-born would be returned to the earth long before her time.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody (MAR 13, 2010)

Secret Daughter by Shilpi Somaya Gowda is an engaging and captivating novel about adoption, family, and the search for self. Set against the backdrop of India, we share the life of Asha, along with her adoptive and biological parents, from the day of Asha’s birth to her development into a young woman.

Asha is Kavita’s second daughter. Due to the dire poverty and circumstances of her life along with the cultural belief in India that boys are much more important than girls, Kavita’s first daughter was taken from her at birth and killed. There is no money for raising more than one child and that child must be a male one. Kavita gives birth secretly to her second child in case it is a girl. When she finds out that it is indeed a girl, she conceals the infant child from her husband who killed her first daughter. She is determined that this daughter will live. Along with her sister, Kavita walks miles to Mumbai. There, she leaves her daughter, who she’s named “Usha,” at an orphanage. Her next pregnancy is fraught with anxiety for fear this child might also be a girl. Luckily, the child is male and is much loved. A day does not go by that Kavita does not think about the heartrending losses of Usha and her dead daughter.

Somer is a physician in the United States who is unable to bear children of her own. She is married to Krishna, an Indian man from Mumbai, also a physician. They decide to go to India to adopt a child. The child they choose is Usha whose name they change to “Asha.” Asha is 10 months old when she is adopted. She is raised in a loving home and given every advantage and entitlement that an upper middle class American child can have. Somer is reluctant to engage in any conversations with Asha about her past or her heritage. She denies that part of her family that is Indian, creating distance and discord between herself, her husand and her daughter. By the time that Asha is twenty years old, she has not been to Mumbai since the time she was in the orphanage.

The novel does a wonderful job of showing the cultural discrepancies of Indian life, its diametrically polar aspects. Indians live either in dire poverty or with great wealth. The slums are described in vivid detail, such that you can almost smell, touch and taste the florid poverty. There is a much larger population of adult men than women in India and the fact that female children are killed at birth or aborted is shown as a routine event in the lives of the poor. Though India is the seat of great advancements in technology, many people live without electricity or basic utilities. Education is valued highly but the poor have little access to it. Children from poor families either work at home in caretaking roles or are on the streets begging. It is rare that a poor Indian child gets to go to school.

Asha is drawn to her Indian heritage but knows little about it. As a child, she resents her parents for not sharing more of her past with her. She writes letters to her birth mother that she keeps in a treasured box. Any family that has dealt with adoption will appreciate the way this book deals with the subject. As Asha searches for her true self, she learns the meaning of real family and inclusion. She struggles to find herself as she is often the only child in her class with very thick black hair, beautiful slanted golden eyes, dark skin, hair on her arms, and big eyebrows. She asks herself where this all comes from, how do others deal with it, why is she different. Somer is blond and blue-eyed, the prototypical Californian. Krishna is a busy neurosurgeon and is not one to sit down with Asha to discuss these poignant concerns.

The book reads quickly and maintained my interest throughout. The only problem I had with it is that some of the characterizations were not treated with the depth they deserve. While I got a fairly clear picture of Asha, Kavita, Somer, and Krishna, it is not until the end of the book that some of these people and Asha’s extended family really became fleshed out for me. Others remained shallow throughout.

It would not surprise me at all if this book becomes a bestseller. It has all the elements that attract readers, especially women. It is a pleasurable read and the characters are mostly likable and easy to identify with. That, combined with the themes of adoption and the Indian culture will make it a novel of interest to many.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 449 readers
PUBLISHER:	William Morrow (March 9, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Shilpi Somaya Gowda
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	More fiction that deals with adoption: A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore Non-fiction with same title as this book: Secret Daughter by June Cross

Bibliography:

• Secret Daughter (2010)