Personal story unfolds to become brilliant tale of Brazil

Spilt Milk

Chico Buarque’s latest novel unfolds from a Rio hospital deathbed as the scrambled first-person narrative of a failing centenarian, Eulalio Assumpcao.

Raving to his daughter, the nurses or even to the walls and ceiling, the glut of broken detail gathers to a slow coherence, until a life is laid finally and fully bare, one lived with vigour and poisoned by privilege. In parallel, a bigger story is told, nothing less than the multi-generational story of Brazil itself.