Nocturnos

Autor: Kazuo Ishiguro

Fonte: Nocturnos - Livro - WOOK. Disponível em: <https://www.wook.pt/livro/nocturnos-kazuo-ishiguro/2081022>. Acesso em: 21 abr. 2020.

Título original: Nocturnes - five stories of music and nightfall
Editora: Gravida Publicações, S. A.
Coleção: Gradiva Ficção
Edição: 3.ª (novembro de 2017)
Tradutor: Rui Pires Cabral
ISBN (international standard book number): 978-989-616-322-8
Número de páginas: 299
Origem do livro: comprado

Comprar: Wook (afiliado)

Sinopse: "Em Nocturnos, Kazuo Ishiguro explora os temas do amor, da música e da passagem do tempo. Das piazze italianas às colinas de Malvern, de um apartamento londrino à zona «reservada» de um luxuoso hotel de Hollywood, encontramos nestas páginas uma singular galeria de personagens – de jovens sonhadores a músicos de café e a vedetas em declínio – num momento particular de reflexão e de reavaliação das suas vidas.

Terno, íntimo e cheio de humor, este quinteto de histórias é marcado por um motivo recorrente: o esforço para preservar o sentido do romance na vida. É um livro para quem se recusa a perder a esperança e teima em ver o lado positivo de tudo o que de bom e mau sucede. Lições de vida e a vida em lições de mestria narrativa."

"Nocturnos" são "cinco histórias sobre música e o cair da noite".

A primeira história, "crooner", é um conto que retrata a vida pessoal de um cantor famoso que está de visita, com a sua esposa, a Veneza. As personagens principais são esse cantor e um guitarrista imigrante que ganha a vida a tocar em bandas pela cidade. Por sua vez, o músico é um grande fã do envelhecido e ultrapassado cantor.

O melhor desta primeira história é a descrição, com algum detalhe, de locais venezianos. Contudo, o enredo é um pouco triste e carece de alguma plausibilidade (ou será o leitor um ingénuo?).

Em suma, depois da leitura de livros de José Saramago, esta história de Karuro Ishiguro, prémio Nobel de literatura 2017, é comparativamente bastante simples e medíocre.

Em "faça chuva ou faça sol" já se nota uma certa notoriedade. A história é cativante e engraçada.

Para quem está a ler pela primeira vez obras do autor, crê-se que os seus temas rondam a problemática dos relacionamentos com mulheres e da sua tentativa de compreendê-las, mulheres essas ambiciosas, inseguras e fúteis.

O enredo tem lugar numa cidade inglesa. A personagem principal é um professor de inglês que vive em Espanha com algumas dificuldades relacionadas com o medíocre salário que recebe nessa profissão itinerante e que vai a Inglaterra de visita a um antigo casal de amigos. Interessante o facto dele também ter dado aulas em Portugal. O professor, pensando que ia aproveitar para descontrair um pouco, vê-se envolvido num processo de tentativa de reconciliação entre marido e mulher.

O único ponto menos bom desta história é o seu final abrupto. Havia margem para continuar a ação. Fica-se a pedir por mais.

A terceira história, "Malvern Hills", também é medíocre. Carece de imaginação. Parece que o autor conhece mais ou menos bem determinado local, para poder colocar as personagens num cenário bem descrito, mas depois a ação é pobre e a mensagem é banal.

O conto decorre inicialmente em Londres e depois em Malvern Hills, Herefordshire, em Inglaterra.

Trata-se da história de um jovem guitarrista que sonha ter uma banda e fazer carreira como músico. O que o autor transmite é a dificuldade em ser-se bem sucedido na área da música e que, por vezes, é o amor ilusório que nos mantém agarrados à guitarra, persistentemente.

"Nocturno" já é uma história mais empolgante, que capta a atenção do leitor. É a melhor das quatro primeiras.

A ação passa-se em Beverly Hills, Los Angeles. Trata-se de um saxofonista, já em idade madura, incitado a submeter-se a uma cirurgia plástica ao rosto para conseguir maior sucesso como músico. No processo, ele trava conhecimento com uma socialite que ele considera superficial. Por conseguinte, o assunto é esse mesmo, a futilidade do mundo das vedetas.

Contudo, uma vez mais, a história fica por acabar. O autor deixa ao critério da imaginação dos leitores o desfecho do conto.

"Os violoncelistas" conta a história de um músico húngaro que sofre uma mudança comportamental depois de travar conhecimento com uma americana que está de passagem por Itália. O assunto é o orgulho e a soberba.

A americana interpreta os sentimentos que, ao escutar a música do seu violoncelo, lhe emergem da alma, e vai corrigindo o jovem músico, de modo a que ele toque da maneira que lhe convenha a ela, ao mesmo tempo que lhe incute um sentimento de superioridade em relação a outros músicos.

Concluindo, para um Nobel de literatura, esperava algo bem melhor.

Northanger abbey (a abadia de Northanger [Portuguese])

By Jane Austen:

A Abadia de Northanger - Jane Austen em Fnac.pt [Internet]. Fnac.com. 2017 [cited 10 January 2017]. Available from: http://www.fnac.pt/A-Abadia-de-Northanger-Jane-Austen/a959154.

This novel of Jane Austen is funny, but it still reveals some immaturity, and the romantic emotion is not of the same magnitude as one feels, for example, in «Persuation» or «Pride and Prejudice». The novel ends with a marriage in which there seems no love, there are enchantment and admiration on the part of Catherine and sympathy from Mr. Tilney.

Some more interesting quotes:

• «Her mother was a woman of useful plain sense, with a good temper, (...).»
• «(...) she was training for a heroine; she read all such works as heroines must read to supply their memories with those quotations which are so serviceable and so soothing in the vicissitudes of their eventful lives.»
• «And from Shakespeare, she gained a great store of information - amongst the rest, that - (...) a young woman in love always looks "like Patience (...)/Smiling at Grief."»
• «(...) when a young lady is to be a heroine, the perverseness of forty surrounding families cannot prevent her. Something must and will happen to throw a hero in a way.»
• «(...) if adventures will not befall a young lady in her own village, she must seek them abroad, (...).»
• «(...) it is this delightful habit of journaling which largely contributes to form the easy style of writing which ladies are so celebrated. (...) the talent of writing agreeable letters is peculiarly female. Nature may have done something, but (...) it must be essentially assisted by the practice of keeping a journal."»
• «Mr. Tilney was polite enough to seem interested in what she said.»
• «Pump Room», a historic building in the Abbey Church Yard, «Bath», Somerset, England:

By Palmer, 1804. Source: Jane Austen's World. (2008). The Pump Room’s Little-Known and Well-Known Facts. [online] Available at: https://janeaustensworld.wordpress.com/2008/10/06/the-pump-rooms-little-known-and-well-known-facts/ [Accessed 28 Jan. 2017].

Entrance to the Pump Room. Source: Jane Austen's World. (2008). The Pump Room’s Little-Known and Well-Known Facts. [online] Available at: https://janeaustensworld.wordpress.com/2008/10/06/the-pump-rooms-little-known-and-well-known-facts/ [Accessed 28 Jan. 2017].

1841. Source: Art.bathnes.gov.uk. (n.d.). Collection Search - Search results. [online] Available at: http://art.bathnes.gov.uk/ow23/collections/rechcroisee.xsp?f=Ensemble&v=&f=Placesearch_field&v=Pump+Room&e= [Accessed 28 Jan. 2017].

The Early Eighteenth Century Pump Room, 1855. Source: Art.bathnes.gov.uk. (n.d.). Collection Search - Search results. [online] Available at: http://art.bathnes.gov.uk/ow23/collections/rechcroisee.xsp?f=Ensemble&v=&f=Placesearch_field&v=Pump+Room&e= [Accessed 28 Jan. 2017].

• «Crescent», a row of 30 terraced houses laid out in a sweeping crescent in the city of Bath, England:

Bath, L. (n.d.). Live the sense and sensibilities of Jane Austen’s Bath. [online] VisitEngland. Available at: https://www.visitengland.com/experience/live-sense-and-sensibilities-jane-austens-bath [Accessed 2 Feb. 2017].

de Vos, M. (2005). The Royal Crescent, Bath. [online] Pinterest. Available at: https://pt.pinterest.com/mariammustaffa/the-royal-crescent-bath/ [Accessed 2 Feb. 2017].

• «(...) curiosity could do no more. (...) This sort of mysteriousness, which is always so becoming in a hero, threw a fresh grace in Catherine's imagination around his person and manners and increased the anxiety to know more of him [Mr. Tilney]. (...) and his impression on her fancy was not suffered therefore to weaken.»
• «If the heroine of one novel be not patronized by the heroine of another, from whom can she expect protection and regard?»
• «(...) some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language.»
• Milsom Street, Bath:

Woodruffe R. Collection Search - Display one record. Artbathnesgovuk. Available at: http://art.bathnes.gov.uk/ow23/collections/voir.xsp?id=00101-11535&qid=sdx_q0&n=3&e=. Accessed March 6, 2017.

TravellingBazaar - Bath Travel Guide. Travellingbazaarcom. 2009. Available at: http://www.travellingbazaar.com/Bath%203.html. Accessed March 6, 2017.

• «(...) Where the heart is really attached, (...). Everything is so insipid, so interesting, that does not relate to the beloved object! (...).»
• «(...) It appeared first in a general dissatisfaction with everybody about her, while she remained in the rooms, which speedily brought on considerable weariness and a violent desire to go home. (...).»
• «(...) she had not been brought up to understand the propensities of a rattle, nor to know to how many idle assertions and impudent falsehoods the excess of vanity will lead. Her own family were plain, matter-of-fact people who seldom aimed at wit of any kind; her father, at the utmost, being contented with a pun, and her mother with a proverb; they were not in the habit therefore of telling lies to increase their importance, or of asserting at one moment what they would contradict the next. (...).»
• «(...). In a private consultation between Isabella and James, the former of whom had particularly set her heart upon going, and the latter no less anxiously placed his upon pleasing her, (...). (...).»
• «(...) Where people wish to attach, they should always be ignorant. To come with a well-informed mind is to come with an inability to administering the vanity of others, which a sensible person would always wish to avoid. (...).»
• «(...): the present was now comprised in another three weeks, and her happiness being certain for that period, the rest of her life was at such distance as to excite but little interest. (...).»
• «It was wonderful that her friends should seem so little elated by the possession of such a home, that the consciousness of it should be so meekly borne. The power of early habit only would account for it. A distinction to which they have been born gave no pride. They superiority of abode was no more to them than their superiority of person.»
• «"But now you love a hyacinth. So much the better. You have gained a new source of enjoyment, and it is well to have as many holds upon happiness as possible. (...)?"/(...)/"(...) The mere habit of learning to love is the thing; and a teachableness of disposition in a young lady is a great blessing. (...)?"»
• «"(...) The money is nothing, it is not an object, but employment is the thing. (...)."»
• «(...) She could remember dozens who have persevered in every possible vice, going on from crime to crime, murdering whomsoever they chose, without any feeling of humanity or remorse; till a violent death or a religious retirement closed their black career. (...).»
• «"(...) Does our education prepare us for such atrocities? Do our laws connive at them? Could they be perpetrated without being known, in a country like this, where social and literary intercourse is on such a footing, where every man is surrounded by a neighbourhood of voluntary spies, and where roads and newspaper lay everything open? (...)?"»
• «(...). (...) when she promise a thing, she was so scrupulous in performing it! (...)!»
• «"(...) our pleasures in this world are always to be paid for, and (...) we often purchase them at a great disadvantage, giving ready-monied actual happiness for a draft on the future, that be not be honoured. (...)."»
• «(...) Mrs. Morland endeavoured to impress on her daughter's mind the happiness of having such steady well-wishers (...), and the very little consideration which the neglect or unkindness of slight acquaintance like the Tilneys ought to have with her, while she could preserve the good opinion and affection of her earliest friends. There was a great deal of good sense in all this; but there are some situations of the human mind in which good sense has very little power; (...).»
• «"There is a very clever essay in one of the books upstairs upon much such a subject, about young girls that have been spoilt for home by great acquaintance - The Mirror, I think. (...)"»
• «"(...) She is ingenuous, but not stupid, and she is keen to detect the falseness of others, (...) [Afterword by P. D. James, 2014]."»
• «"(...) She is deeply in love, and it is, more moderately, reciprocated by Henry, whose affection is based on her effusive passion for him [Afterword by P. D. James, 2014]."»
• «"The reader may wonder if the wedding will be the happiest of all marriages of the six Jane Austen novels. Henry Tilney is a very insightful young man, and Catherine will hardly match him in conversation, wit or intelligence. (...) [Afterword by P. D. James, 2014]."»

Naked in death (in death #1) (nudez mortal [Portuguese])

By Nora Roberts:

Images.gr-assets.com. (n.d.). [online] Available at: https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1462140609l/30070295.jpg [Accessed 30 Dec. 2016].

Novel first published in July 1995. It was my first meeting with a crime novel by Nora Roberts. It's a very nice novel, because it mixes the typical police literature with a love story. But do not underestimate the author as police writer! Nora Roberts is very good at imagining crime scenes and suspense. The novel is written in a future age, but without eccentricities.
Some quotes from this first book of the «In death» series, preceding «Glory in death», by the pseudonym J. D. Robb:

• «"(...) She told me once she'd never planned on making a career out of professional sex. She'd only gotten into it to make her family crazy. But then, after she got into it, she decided she liked it." (...) "So she stayed in the life, and killed two birds with one fuck. (...)"»
• «Eve hated funerals. She detested the rite human beings insisted on giving death. (...). There might be a God. She hadn't completely ruled such things out. And if there were, she thought, It must have enjoyed a good laugh over Its creations' useless rituals and passages.»
• «I hate to wast time», Roarke said.
• «"(...) Some men find the cool, disinterested, and understated attractive. Makes them think you're deep. (...)"», Mavis said, Eve's friend.
• «"So how did you get rich?" She asked him./"Various ways." (...).», Roarke replied./«"Name one."», Eve requested./«"Desire" (...).», Roarcke said./«"Not good enough." (...) "Most people want to be rich."», Eve said.»/«"They do not want  it enough. To fight for it. To take risks for it."», he aswered.
• «(...) She didn't have your thoroughness, Eve, your control, nor your enviable concentration.», Roarke said.
• «And it was terrifying to realize she believed him, and not be sure, not be absolutely certain if she believed because she needed to.»
• «"(...) The most obvious would be the subject could find her self-worth only in sexual skill. She either enjoyed or detested the act."/(...). "If she detested it, why would she become a pro?"/"To punish."/"Herself?"/"Certainly, and those close to her."»
• «"Whatever we've done in genetic engineering, in vitro, with social programs, we still can't control basic human failings: violence, lust, envy."/"The seven deadly sins."»
• «That was the biggest problem with getting used to someone, she thought. You were lonely when they weren't there.»