Dora, Doralina     by Rachel de Queiroz, Translated by Dorothy Scott Loos Original title: Dora, Doralina Original language: Portuguese Country: Brazil   Published by Morrow,William & Co Pub. Date: 1983 Format: Mass Market Paperback ISBN: 0380848228 List Price: $4.50, £4.50 Buy online from Amazon.co.uk for £4.50 Publisher Unknown Pub. Place: UK List Price: £4.50 Not available for ordering Published by Avon Pub. Place: USA Format: Paperback Not available for ordering

Dora leaves her hostile mother and the family ranch in the wilds of Ceará to follow her heart and find her independence. In the capital Fortaleza she joins a theatre company and journeys with them throughout the North-East, then South through Minas Gerais to Rio de Janeiro, observing the countryside, the audiences and her flamboyant companions along the way, her eventful new life making up for her lonely childhood on the Fazenda Soledade (‘Loneliness Ranch’).

Queiroz portrays both rural and urban Brazil, from desert scrubland to Copacabana beach, her travelling heroine quickly learning to adapt to her new surroundings. No matter where she goes, she never forgets her North-Eastern roots, her accent, local sayings and customs, for they are an important part of her identity. References to the Prestes Column (a legendary «Long March» of leftist rebel soldiers in the mid 1920s), World War Two, and populist President Getúlio Vargas’ suicide in 1953, set the scene in historical terms. The period detail of Studebakers, hand-made dresses and soap operas on the radio help bring Dora’s world to life for the reader. The novel portrays her search for love, not necessarily to be found in marriage, and the value of friendship. As usual in Rachel de Queiroz’s work the female characters are strong and independent (the figure of the independent widow appears frequently) and also lonely.

Dora tells her story in a lively and chatty way, punctuating her observations with exclamations and questions to the reader. Her account jumps backwards and forwards in time as she is reminded of something in the past or gets emotional, mentioning a detail for the first time and whetting the reader’s appetite to know more. Highly entertaining throughout, as a good actress should be, she keeps our attention by depicting moments of conflict and tragedy but also lots of comedy, and by describing exciting moments or colourful scenes, such as a rowdy Carnival parade in downtown Rio, a nationalistic show to boost morale during the war, or a packed riverboat navigating the São Francisco river. Dora’s eye for touches of beauty, especially in nature, and her sensitivity towards and awareness of the feelings of others are clear from her actions within the text, and from the compelling way she tells her story.

Most of what they caught was piranha. I knew piranha very well; in the sertão that was what we had mostly. The Sitia stream, a tributary of the Salgado, in turn a tributary of the Jaguaribe, was where all the sertão piranhas came from. But ours was a little fish that got no bigger than the palm of one’s hand at most; and there were two kinds of them, the white and the black, the black being the more ferocious. When I was a small girl, Senhora sometimes called me a black piranha because of what she called my evil nature...

Seu Brandini caught the largest fish of all; the creature writhed on the deck, leaped half a meter in the air and glittered in the sun. Seu Brandini threw himself on top of the fish and held the gills in order not to be bitten (in the sertão there is a saying that the piranha bites even after it is dead), and he let out that yell of happiness that was like Tarzan’s roar: ‘My God, but this is the life!’ 155-156