Yayá Garcia     by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, Translated by R.L. Scott-Buccleuch Original title: Iaiá Garcia Original language: Portuguese Country: Brazil   Publisher Unknown Pub. Place: UK List Price: £14.95 Not available for ordering

A beautiful tribute to the talents, perceptiveness and intelligence of young women who may lack experience but have a precious kind of optimism and energy, Machado slowly builds up a picture of the attractive young Yayá, a charming and affectionate girl, still at school when we meet her.

To begin with we think we’re going to read a rather romantic and rose-coloured love story; expecting of course that there might be a few tricks of fate to twist the path of true love — but no reader could ever guess the actual course of events. After his sugary start Machado plunges Yayá and three other contenders in the mating rite into the most extraordinary thwarted situation of mutual dissimulation, manipulation and betrayal.

It is widely agreed that in this early work Machado first demonstrates his genius as a writer and the book’s climax in a mad incestual mêlée of jealousy and rivalry is simply very startling. A very deceiving book to begin with that finishes in a narrative whirl.

Of the various qualities needed in chess Yayá possessed two of the most essential: quick apprehension and a benedictine patience — qualities equally precious in life, which with its problems and conflicts is itself a game of chess, some games being won, others lost, others drawn. 138