The Scent of a Lie

Paulo da Costa was born in Luanda, Angola, the Portuguese Lourenço Marques back then. He moved back to continental Portugal when he was still a young child and Portugal is where he is from in all senses of the word. "The Scent of a Lie" is his only published fiction book to date and it spells "missing home" in every page: Paulo da Costa is a naturalized Canadian citizen. The book includes a number of short stories all of which take place in Portugal. The stories' plots are intertwined and we keep coming back to the same familiar characters at different times in their lives, coming from different perspectives. This web of characters, places and time make for a very rich fabric, made deeper by the slow ebbing of time. The beginning portrays a poor, isolated region of Portugal as it was one hundred years ago. The last short story takes place in the same area but in more recent times. The characters brought to life by Paulo da Costa are at once very realistic and somewhat fantasized. The fantasy element causes reviewers and the author to recognize influences from the magical realism of Garcia Marquez and José Saramago. The main character in these short stories is however the Portuguese region of "Beira Litoral", so well painted that if the reader were showed photos of this region, he or she would find them redundant. This is a book to buy for the good writing, for the detailed portrait of a Portuguese province and for the true to life depiction of people who lived one hundred years ago in some lost villages of Beira. Paulo da Costa is also a fine ironist and his lines will make you smile for the originality of the point of view and for the social criticism of a society founded upon the stiff rules of a structured class system long gone. It seems the author found his freedom elsewhere and it is this distance that allows him to look back with clarity and insight at his lost country's past and at his own past. Paulo da Costa writes poetry more that he writes prose but judging from this book, may be he should give fiction a try. I can't help thinking that a full fledged novel would be a major challenge and a major accomplishment.