A story of change in a rural village in Portugal told through many voices, both local and foreign. Ultimately it is a story of rural decline and the vain hope that it can be arrested in the face of young people emigrating and the inconsistency of the new arrivals seeking some sort of future in the sun. Because of the multiple voices each one having only a remote connection to the previous one, it doesn’t quite hang together as a novel. Having said that, it does contain beautiful and perceptive writing with credible characters, the young with their aspirations, some more ambitious than others, and the old with their memories of sterner times and biting poverty. Since it is set in the Alentejo, cork and its gradual decline as a stopper for wine bottles is constantly in the background as is a rather fanatical form of Catholicism. However, the cultural clash between a very traditional society and the newcomers from all over Europe seems to be becoming less marked, and in the character of Vasco, a local having spent many years in the US, acts as a bridge between the old world and the new – both physically and metaphorically. Overall, I enjoyed this book, although I became a little impatient with some of the characters, Chrissie and her wastrel husband China, for example. Although towards the end, even they clean up their messy lifestyle. Not all the loose ends are well-tied however, and this reflects the basic problem with writing a fictional account of a real life community, it is a continuing story and one which I hope Monica Ali returns to in a few years.
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