
José Henrique Bortoluci
Suitably for a book whose central theme relates to driving lorries around the road system of Brazil, What Is Mine features many busy intersections. Author José Henrique Bortoluci is a sociologist by trade, so the junctions he stops at are those linking class and cultural pride, machismo and familial obligations, terminal illness and capitalism.
The erstwhile haulage worker is Bortoluci’s father Didi, who turned 80 last year (after this book was first published in Brazil) and has been living with cancer since late 2020. Son José uses a series of interviews – as well as some personal memoir – to create What Is Mine’s connective tissue. Didi is depicted as an almost pathologically apolitical man: too old and retired to be much affected by the Bolsonaro regime, yes, but claiming to be all but oblivious to the thuggery of the 1970s military dictatorship.
You may find it hard not to warm to Bortoluci Sr, though, as much as this BBQ-mad ladies’ man expresses something like the Brazilian id. Most usefully for What Is Mine, he is a fine teller of stories, certainly when ventriloquised through his son: one, in which he is tasked to drive a consignment of wine to Boa Vista in time for Christmas so its denizens can get festively pissed, is some automotive derring-do worthy of a movie.
What Is Mine, José Henrique Bortoluci [trans. Rahul Bery] (Fitzcarraldo Editions)
Price: £10.99/£4.99 Ebook. Info: here
words NOEL GARDNER