Circle of Acceptance Book

Not for the timid. I've been putting off finishing this book for fear of writing a review. It will come. I need to sleep on it.

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I've slept on it. This review will be done by instalment. I'll never get it out in one coherent text.

It is a solid 4 out of 5.
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So this is the story of a family living outside of Lisbon in Portugal - although there is a great deal of moving around. (I thought I knew a lot about Lisbon from reading all that Saramago. I was wrong.)
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The family is made up of a father (Carlos), a mother (Judite), and their son (Paulo). Paulo is the central character and the story is told through his eyes or mind except when it's not and is seen through the eyes or mind of any one of a dozen or so other characters.
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Warning, if you read this book you will be spending a lot of time puzzling over whose eyes or mind you are seeing the story through at any given moment.
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The basic story revolves around the father, who probably isn't the biological father (I suspect the electrician but I don't think even Judite is sure.), reveals himself to be a transvestite and moves into Lisbon to become an 'entertainer' named Soraia in a club. Everything goes down hill from there.
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After that it's your basic story of pain, decadence, drug addiction, mental hospital, perversion, child molestation, sadism, heartbreaking memories of childhood innocence (the toy car with the wooden wheels) and the like. As the story is based on memories being described over a period of time, there is also a great deal of repetition and contradiction.
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Now that I've revealed the basic plot, I'll stop while I regroup and prepare to let you know why I 'liked' this book. More to come.
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So now: Why I liked 'What Can I do When Everything's on Fire'.

The experience of reading the book is one of confusion (where are we? who's speaking? when is this happening?); one of pain and horror and general sadness; one where the reader is continually frustrated by the self-destructive behaviour of all of the characters. Nobody is ever granted a reprieve. No one will ever find salvation. And finally, there is not the slightest possibility of hope. Never. Pain and anguish shall prevail. So what's not to like?

When I read Carole Maso's brilliant novel, 'Defiance', I found myself immediately empathizing with her. Whatever the reason for her monstrous behaviour, for her fatal, suicidal decisions, I knew who she was. Here, in Antonio Lobo Antunes novel of complete despair, my empathy came only in starts and stops. Images of a child with his toy, of a father trying to tend his garden, of a woman showing off her ring to her colleagues all bring forward those basic human feelings, only to have them become the child trying to smash his toy in frustration, the garden overgrown (did it really exist?) and the ring and the marriage lost forever. Mostly I feel the pain but I'm frustrated by not understanding the nature of the destruction.

It is only by plodding through the confusion and identifying the voices, the places and the times that the reader begins to really understand the helplessness of all of the characters. As with Maso's book, it all begins with an act of sexual abuse of a child which grows and festers like an infected boil that can't be reached and is beyond any possible treatment. But this can only be understood by staying with the characters and digging into their personas.

Antonio Lobo Antunes worked as a psychiatrist. One senses his questioning and pushing his patients to find their own truths in their camouflaged confusion. He forces them to vomit up the built-up lifetime of bile to try to bring them to understanding. The reader is left to ride along as a listener in the next room, never quite sure. And, as is often the case with lifelong mental deviance, there seems to be no cure. The psychiatrist must fail. He, with the reader in tow, can make sense of it in the end, but there is no cure.

Like a series of Greek tragedies or perhaps Shakespeare's Hamlet, some sort of final justice is sought to bring the world back into balance. In this case, we wait in vain for Hamlet to die, as he must. He refuses.

Why do I like this book? Because, after much effort, I have engaged my empathy. I am no longer impatient with the swirling madness of it all. What is portrayed is a modern tragedy. As with all successful modern tragedies, and there are few, the root of it all lies with sexuality, the root of all evil. WE are but emotional children who have no idea as to what we are as sexual beings. We keep pretending that the mark of humanity is rationality, homo sapiens. Piffle. Let us suffer.