Livros

It is not uncommon for writers to debut with collections of short stories.
It wasn’t so with Paul Marcel.

With three novels under his belt, it had never occurred to Paul to try his hand at another brand of fiction.

Available in this volume, “Homeland” and “The Post Office woman” grew for years in the recess of the mind where ideas are born, all but forgotten, when Paul fig-ured out the shape they were to take at some point in 2021.

Writing them at last was the catalyst of the succession of nineteen stories that make up “View from the tower”.

The author himself acknowledges that enunciation and subject matter are of a different sort here. His penchant for synthesis, manifest in his opinion pieces and re-views, makes stories more concise than usual in this genre. Arguments compress emo-tionally charged situations to maximize them.

Among others, we will acquaint ourselves with an actor who brings out more of himself than he’d like to be able to perform; with a married couple who builds too many expectations towards their children; with a renowned chef who no longer enjoys cooking after a devastating personal loss.

Similarly to his more voluminous works of fiction, in these short stories Paul’s viewpoint shifts between judiciousness and compassion in conducting the fates of his characters.

Available on Amazon

Does music translate into words? Now it does

The lead character of this book is identified as ‘the drummer’, or simply ‘he’.

‘He’ is a musician who plays in a jazz band and dreams of a professional career while selling women’s shoes at a local store for a living.

Like silent witnesses, we watch the music being made in the heat of improvisation, before our eyes, so to speak – narrated music, or as close to that as words can take us.

Torn between everyday trivialness and art’s flights of fancy, ‘he’ searches for the same as the rest of us: the life he’s meant to live, a life where one can find beauty and purpose.

Available on Amazon

Paris, 1940. James Joyce is about to be expelled by the Nazis to Zurich, where he’ll die the following year. During the last months of his life, the Irish author wins a pupil – a fledgling Brazilian writer and unconditional admirer of his works.

The daily coexistence with the author of “Ulysses”– whom he calls “Master” and whose words guide (or taunt, or puzzle) him – will underline the learning path of the narrator, who recounts his attempts to get his own work published amidst reflections deriving from his readings of Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf and Thomas Mann, among other luminaries of world literature.

“To epiphanize” dissects the expectations and misgivings which take hold of those who devote themselves to the lonely task of literary creation. The story of this passionate reader who aims to become a writer is the center of a narrative which explores, with both irony and tenderness, the myths involving the image of the artist who faces the constant challenge of the blank page in a relentless exercise of writing and rewriting in search of the sublime feeling of accomplishment.

Available on Amazon