by Maria Judite de Carvalho (Author), Margaret Jull Costa (Translator)
Mateus Silva is at a crossroads, but too paralyzed to change direction in a life that he no longer seems to control. After 25 years away, he has returned to sell his childhood home so he can send his longtime girlfriend-whom he now realizes he may have never loved-on a trip to the Acropolis before her cancer kills her. Mateus sells the home to the first bidder: his wealthy neighbor from childhood, whose wife, Graça, enchanted Mateus as a young man. It was Graça's beauty, paired with his father's unfaithfulness, that broke up his family. But the woman he sees now bears little resemblance to the one he remembers, and you can't move forward by revisiting the past.
