Mini - Comments

I've recently read two books by Portuguese authors, that I brought from the library. I had previously read other things by both of them, so I kind of knew what to expect...

Aguas Passadas by João Tordo is a thriller, featuring a police inspector, Pilar, who is investigating the murder of a teenager, whose body was found in a beach. While investigating, another teenager's body is found in a forest, and the details seem very similar to another case, from almost 30 years before. Could it be that the same killer is redoing their work, why are these two the victims? As Pilar, who has issues of her own, delves into the lives of those closer to the victims, she finds a lot more than she imagined, but will she be able to find the truth in time before the killer turns their attention to her? 

I actually liked the story of this book, and the police investigation, and I think the end result was quite intriguing, considering the thriller genre is not the predominant in authors here. What I think wasn't as well done was the pace here and there, too obvious the attempt to give the plot moodiness, and honestly, the characters, namely protagonist Pilar, not that easy to like. I was also a little annoyed that a few characters were portrayed in a relatively negative way and I wonder why, the focus should have really been on the plot.

Still, I liked turning the pages and I wanted to find out who the killer was, so...

Grade: 6/10

Até Amanhã, Camaradas! by Manuel Tiago is a book from 1974 and the author was actually the leader of the Communist Party here in Portugal, responsible for most of the rebellions against the dictatorship and the government and, in part, why the military revolution precisely in 1974 allowed the country to become a democracy. Anyway, that man wrote several books under pseudonym (reveled years later) and most of the plots, such as the one here, are about how people would do things in hiding to spread the news, to inform people, to let them know something was being done to, one day, stop the dictatorship.

I liked this book because of the message it entails; unlike what many anti-Communists say, to me the book isn't a praise to the Party or a brain wash, to me this is a story about simple people, most in the countryside and without the benefits of the big cities, trying to give hope to people, trying to do something to convince others there were other ways. Many were persecuted, arrested, tortured for doing this (I've personally met some of these men and women who had been in jail... obviously, many are now old or have died already), but more than the fictional plot, which could certainly have been better told or structured, I think it was a good way to show the work of the Party and what many did trying to change things the only way they could. It's like a little piece of our History.
Grade: 7/10