The Shape of Bones

When Hermano was very young, say ten years old, he would ride his bicycle as fast as he could through the dangerous hilly streets of Esplanada, his Brazilian hometown. Once, after what had become a fairly typical occurrence: a painful and bloody wipe out on an unyielding macadam surface, Hermano wipes away the tears to spy an old abuela tottering his way. "That blood there, you know, that's bad blood," she explains after assessing his wounded knee. "You know there's good blood and bad blood don't you? Bad blood is that dark blood coming out there, it's dirty blood. It runs just under the surface... Good blood is different, it's lighter in color, almost pink, and it runs through the big veins... That bad blood there... (Y)ou've got to let it out, because then your body will make more of the good blood, the clean sort that runs through the inside, to replace the bad blood, understand?"Grandma's advice to young Hermano, as contrived as it sounds, turns out to be the central theme (both in a literal and a figurative sense) of Daniel Galera's latest novel, The Shape of Bones. As Hermano reaches adolescence, his quest to rid himself of that bad blood intensifies. The streets and football pitches of Esplanada are a proving ground for him and his crew. One day while playing a pickup game of soccer, Hermano decides to stand up to the stocky, brutish kid they call Bonobo and in so doing provokes a mini rivalry which will lead to a calamitous series of events. Such experiences formulate our adult perspectives.Skip ahead some years: Hermano, married now with a child, is leaving early one morning to meet up with a work aquaintance. They intend to scale the rock face of a Bolivian peak called Cerro Bonete. Galera alternates chapters between the adolescent and the grown up, showing us cause and effect. Whereas, Hermano tears around on his BMX competing with his fellow daredevils in a dangerous game to see who can cycle the fastest down a particularly treacherous hill, the adult Hermano still seems to have something to prove, only more so to himself this time. He is still trying to rid himself of that bad blood.Galera's writing is perspicacious enough and Entrekin's translation is seamless, however I needed a bit more on why the young Hermano acts as he does. No one is a masochist for no reason. For this reason the book felt somewhat artificial. If only the author had probed to the heart of the matter, the well written and poignant ending would have packed more of a wallop. If we only knew why that advice from the old woman in his youth should have been so important to Hermano; why does he feel the need to clear out the bad blood to feel clean again? What was the germ than began his extreme life of recklessness? What makes him feel good about suffering? Galera could have hinted at why, but on the other hand it could be that in the barrios of Brazil these facts don't bear repeating. Maybe all that matters is the resolution.~3.5 stars.

This is the first time I read a novel by Brazilian author Daniel Galera. At first , I thought that book was mislabeled as a novel because chapters appears to me to be a collection of seemingly unrelated stories. It was only towards the very end of the book that I realized that certain chapters were flashbacks from the main protagonist's life. It is a beautifully written book about how our upbringing can have an impact on how we shape our lives. No matter what, we shape our destiny by choices we make and at the end, that is what makes us masters of our life. We are all alone in this world no matter how large or small our family is or how many friends we have. WE close one chapter in our lives and move on to the next by not allowing others to influence us but by making our own choices.

Surely Brazilian novelist Daniel Galera is among the finest contemporary novelists today. I was mesmerized by his first novel, Blood-Drenched Beard, and couldn’t wait to read The Shape of Bones. I was not disappointed.The story centers on a young married man who is preparing to climb the virgin mountain, Cerro Benete—one of the final mountains to be conquered—with his boastful best friend. We know the narrator only as Hermano—translated to “brother”—and as he drives to meet that friend, we catch glimpses of his childhood in Esplanada, where he was part of a gang of boys. Every other chapter is structured as a flashback.Through these flashbacks, we learn that Hermono has considered his life to be “an endless rehearsal for a heroic moment that never arrived. A permanent limbo between innocence and heroism, inhabited by ghostly projections of himself, distorted by what he wished he had been or wanted to become.” Increasingly, he punishes his body, embracing more and more strident risks, learning to inure himself from the physical pain. But is that punishment a metaphor for inuring his mind and his essence as well?As the risks and the punishment escalate, Hermano struggles with one particularly haunting moment when his striving for heroism and masculinity deserted him. Can he achieve redemption? This beautifully-written book, expertly translated from the Portuguese by Alison Entrekin, examines that moment when we strive to finally achieve a sense of grace.

The first book of Galera's that I read (also in translation), Blood-Drenched Beard, is one of my favorite books of all time. He has an amazing way of writing - his words are sparse, yet every word is imbued with meaning. Even in translation, the sentences go deeper and the chapters resonate more than it seems they should. This book, too, is no disappointment.The book is told in alternating chapters, going between the narrator's childhood in the suburbs of Porto Alegre and his current life as a doctor, husband, and father. As a child, he is intentionally reckless and adrenaline-seeking. As an adult, he is careful to an extreme. Everything about his life is planned meticulously, from his career as a plastic surgeon to his rock climbing hobby. How can you reconcile these two lives?The book opens with the narrator preparing for his most reckless rock climbing ascent yet with his climbing partner - a dangerous mountain that has never been scaled. His wife doesn't support the mission and he leaves the house with tension between them.Meanwhile, together with the chapters from his childhood, you know the book is racing toward something and you know it's going to be something bad, but you don't know what. I can't tell too much of the plot here as it would spoil the book, and the book is short and fast. But by the end of the book, you see exactly how the narrator came to be who he is.

This is the second book by Daniel Galera to be translated into English, but it precedes Blood Soaked Beard, which was one of my favorite books three years ago. The writing in this is not assured as in that book, but that may be because of being written earlier, also it is not as well fleshed out. What both books share is a haunted protagonist.Dr. Hermano Weissmann's daredevil past while growing up in Esplanada, Brazil, included cycling down streets and hills with ill advised speed and abandon. This seemingly recklessnes has followed him to adulthood where he seeks inaccessible peaks and challenges regardless of consequences. But during the course of this slim novel, he comes to face the demons of his youth. The present is the framework, the bones, upon which hangs the events of the past, and those scenes set in boyhood and youth were by far the most vivid. It is possible to see the boy in the man he has become, but the boy was far more interesting.