There's No Point in Dying
A night of violence is routine, expected, and devastating in Francisco Maciel’s literary novel There’s No Point in Dying.
There is a favela (slum) in the birthplace of samba. At its center are three bars. They’re close enough that the Comadres can start at one and work their way through each in a single weekend, no breaks.
Guile Xangô and Vovô do Crime alternate shouting at each other and buying each other drinks. Rival gangs clash with the police and each other. Those lucky enough to become elders watch as street justice rules.
Death and dying haunt the narrative, which spins out from Dafé, who has only minutes left to live, then jumps through the lives of his neighbors. There’s a Rashomon-evocative time-loop quality to the tale: characters who die in one vignette are alive again in later pieces, and the story spirals toward a massacre marked by grief and resignation. That spiral can be hard to follow as speakers change often and perspectives shift. The totality coalesces around a handful of core narrators, but the entire community speaks—even the animals have their places.
The book’s distance from the action is at times voyeuristic and disconcerting. But as narrators shift, so, too, does the way they tell their stories. Several speak in direct terms, demanding to be seen and heard. Others speak in philosophical allegories or are carried away by visions only they can see. Petty dramas are treated with as much weight as warlords ordering death and soldiers posturing for power. Violence is perpetrated by and against men and women alike. Still, these are “people who insist on surviving.”
There’s No Point in Dying is a harrowing novel in vignettes, a story of a community intent on survival through whatever means necessary.
Reviewed by
Dontaná McPherson-Joseph
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