Fathers and Daughters

In her eighth novel, The Painter of Birds, Lídia Jorge aims to create a story full of rich language and imagery. And perhaps when read in its original Portuguese the novel achieves her goal. But in translation, much of this richness is lost. The novel seems to be competing with itself: the timeframe, plot line and character interactions are complex, but the writing itself is simple. This competition works against the novel, making it good, but not outstanding.

The Painter of Birds documents the lives and relations of an extended Portuguese family living through and after World War II. Told through the varying points of view of an omnipresent narrator and the story’s protagonist, The Painter of Birds is a coming of age story much like Julia Alvarez’s How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents. Jorge’s characters, like Alvarez’s, live in a large family compound under the guidance of a stern father who watches in pain as his offspring leave him and his family values behind for a more modern world. The daughter that is left behind is the secret and shame of the family. Her father is actually Walter, one of the sons who has gone out into the world.

Initially, the novel is engaging, with a brief overview of the compound, the characters and a visit from father to daughter. This candlelit visit will be the center of the story and the center of the daughter’s longing, and Jorge indicates its significance from the beginning. But, despite the significance of this visit, the references to it and various other critical events in the story become repetitive through the novel. The most noticeable redundancy in this portion of novel is the fact that the main character doesn’t have a name; she is just referred to over and over again as “the daughter.” Throughout the first half of the novel, this visit, the image of Walter riding in on his buggy and the daughter’s habit of holding onto her father’s gun and staring lovingly at his paintings of birds are repeated over and over again. It is as though Jorge thinks that the reader doesn’t understand that these events all symbolize the daughter’s longing for her father. These types of repetition make the first half of the book drag.

And then the novel has its turning point. Walter returns to the family home in Portugal after traveling the world as a soldier and an artist. He arrives in a taxi—something the family has never seen before—and brings cars and other modern luxuries to the compound. His daughter is filled with the love she had never felt from the portion of her family with whom she lives and her mother rediscovers her love for Walter. After he disappears as abruptly as he came, the story begins to change. The voice of the daughter replaces the omnipresent narrator and the lives of the other family members finally become known. We see how the narrator’s mother, Maria Ema, is overcome with grief at the loss of her lover and suddenly the narrator leaves the room in which she spent most of the first half of the novel and explores the area around her. It is in this time that she explores her sexuality, as well. As the characters mesh together and time becomes more constant, The Painter of Birds comes together.

But even this cannot redeem the novel’s slow start. Although the story is interesting, its themes of family conflict and a child’s longing for her absent father are not particularly original. And although the novel should be full of beautiful description, it leaves the reader wishing for a clearer picture of the homestead and the coastline of Portugal on which the story takes place.

The Painter of birds

by Lídia Jorge

translated by Margaret Jull Costa

Harcourt Brace

233 pp., $24