Poet Elizabeth Bishop was a life-long believer in change for change's sake and in restorative travel. In 1951, after one of her periodic hospital stays to recover from a particularly destructive alcoholic binge, she shipped off on an excursion to South America, with Brazil as her first stop. She had planned to visit a few old friends for a week or so and then travel farther afield; unexpectedly, her Brazilian visit lasted for years.
In his lovingly imagined novel of Bishop's Brazilian sojourn, Michael Sledge focuses on her life-changing encounters in a country very different from the New England and Nova Scotia she knew so well. In Rio, she reunites with Lota de Macedo Soares, whom she had met five years before in New York. Lota is building a modernist house in the jungle outside Rio and wants to show Elizabeth her vision. Elizabeth accompanies Lota and her companion, Mary, to the half-completed house, spectacularly sited on a mountain, and is soon in awe of Lota's energy and drive. Lota, for her part, thinks Elizabeth is a genius. Mary's tart dismissal of Elizabeth with, "She's a drunk and a hypochondriac. Everyone knows that!" signals another change on the horizon, one that will find Elizabeth replacing Mary in Lota's affections.
Elizabeth Bishop was not a confessional poet, and Sledge is careful to preserve her dignity at the same time he explores the intense connection she forms with Lota. In the beginning, their differences attract and thrill them: Elizabeth is shy, passive and lacks self-confidence; Lota is dynamic, ambitious and loves a good fight. As the depth of their passion begins to overwhelm them, Elizabeth confesses, "It is hard for me to believe in happiness. I resist it. I've spent so much time just trying to survive." To which Lota replies, "And now you thrive."
Brazil, Sledge shows, is transformative for Bishop both emotionally and artistically. He captures her enchantment with the Amazon (the river and the jungle) as well as the growing self-confidence that will one day allow her to teach in American universities. He is equally adept at portraying Lota's love of architectural modernism and her disastrous entanglements with Brazilian politics when she leads the campaign to construct a public park in Rio. Day by day, though, as Elizabeth and Lota become absorbed by the demands of their separate careers, they cut themselves off from the emotional core that sustained them for a decade. The collapse of their once-engulfing passion, even if seen as inevitable in Sledge's sympathetic telling, is unbearably sad--they gave each other so much that neither ever dreamed of having, and yet, in the end, they couldn't save each other.--John McFarland
Shelf Talker: An evocative novel of all that Elizabeth Bishop found to love during a 17-year sojourn in Brazil and of the love that found her there.