VIA ÁPIA, an English-language debut that really puts the reader in the minds of the young men it follows, by Brazil's Bright Young Thing

VIA ÁPIA
GEOVANI MARTINS (tr. Julia Sanches)
FSG Originals (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$12.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: From one of Brazil’s most acclaimed new literary stars, a twenty-first-century epic set in Rio’s largest favela.

Brothers Washington and Wesley work part-time at a restaurant as servers for kids’ birthday parties. After helping their mom out with the household expenses, they spend the extra cash on a bit of fun whenever possible, and get high on that good quality weed when it’s available. Douglas, Murilo, and Biel split an apartment, sharing everything from their joints to their chores, just a quick bus ride from the beach on Via Ápia, the main entry point and commercial avenue of the favela Rocinha in Rio de Janeiro.

The lives of these five young people are far from the ease and leisure that many associate with one of Brazil’s most photogenic, well-known cities. Still, they manage, and life on the morro, the hill, is good.

All of this gets upturned when, in November 2011, the UPP, Brazil’s militarized police unit, occupies Rocinha as part of the "pacification" efforts and the so-called war on drugs, in anticipation of the World Cup, the Olympics, and an influx of global tourism in Rio. Via Ápia is divided into three parts: the expectant anxiousness of waiting for the UPP invasion; the chaos born from their installation on the hill; and their silent withdrawal from the favela after one year.

Told in short bursts and marked by the charged chronology of the year and a half of the protagonists’ lives, Geovani Martins’s prodigious debut novel knits together the dramas and dreams of the favela during a peak of violence and unrest. Just like the boomboom-kat of Brazilian funk, the unbridled ambitions and the resolute friendships of his characters blare through Via Ápia, delivering a resonant counternarrative to the notion that violent interventions are the state’s only remedies to social problems. The favela retorts: Life, life is the answer.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: A story as loud and resonant as its prose, as terrible as its grim political roots, and as clear-sighted as the view from its birthplace on a Rio hillside.

People in Brazil contend with a political and social system that is far more brutal on a day-to-day basis than any non-Red State one in the US. Their policing exceeds even ours in militarized ruthlessness. This story highlights the consequences of that abusive system.

Quite a lot of this story, in its relentlessly young-male focus, deals with casual sex and drug use and the anomie of being made to feel useless and worthless. Why should I care about anything you do if no one else cares about me? The inevitable solipsism of the young is foregrounded, and shown in the light of a normal response to a deeply dysfunctional system. It is a story told in conversational tones, in direct and engaging images that we can immediately relate to.

What that offers in immediacy it reduces in specificity. I'm never quite sure who's "speaking" to me. A lot of that is down to my old-man impatience with Youth, I'm quite sure:

"You ever worked a party for someone famous?" Talia asked once they'd finished discussing their favorite bailes and pagodes.

"Oh yeah, loads. Tons of actors and soccer players throw parties here...One time I worked this gig for Luciano Huck and Angélica's kids. It was wild. There were so many celebrities, the place looked like the season finale of a telenovela or something. The managers were all twitchy cause everything had to be perfect and shit, but it was pretty low-key in the end."

Keeping in mind the main PoV characters are brothers working together, and you might see the issue. I'm pretty impressed with the seamlessness of the translation as it moves between points of English not having a word, and using an English word in place of the Brazilian one. In that example, "soccer player" subs in for "futebolista," "bailes and pagodes" doesn't need an explicit translation because they're cultural touchstones we know we don't share, but "telenovela" is now well-enough known in US English that it needs no translation yet still carries an explicit idea.

So it's a deft presentation of a Brazilian-language story. It might not be a perfect read for me, in the sense that it is not aimed at me. I'm here to tell you, though, that anyone who'd like to comprehend how young men could choose to support an appalling, cruel, and evil system in US politics should read this story. It shows us how it feels to be the young men in question. It points out our blindness to the consequences of privilege unexamined and ill-considered. Every time I can tempt someone into this kind of reading, it increases the chances of all of us finding empathy for and commonality with those being Othered.

I call that a big win all the way around.