Amado is an excellent story-teller. "Gabriela" has enough drama and pace to be readable amidst noisy distractions and does not waste time with throw-away characters or descriptive flourish. The turn of the century, back country Brazil is ribald, gossipy, comical, obsessed with political intrigue and prepared for great violence. The book is on a mission to praise open-handed, casual and lusty sex—not just because of its frequent reference to brothel/cabarets but at its structural core and in its own method of bringing resolution (very much in opposition to the standard marriage-brings-closure model). Jealousy, pride and possession get blasted throughout.

Amado’s case was perfectly convincing for me; though Gabriela’s simple childishness is a little bit overdone. Some readers will get irritated when Amado drops his normal prose style in an attempt to convey the “I don’t get it” inner monologue of an otherwise magnetic and seductive character. For instance, “Why did he have to marry her? It was awful being married, she didn’t like it at all . . . she couldn’t do any of the things she liked. She couldn’t play merry-go-round in the square . . . she couldn’t walk barefoot on the sidewalk in front of the house. She couldn’t run on the beach . . . she mustn’t do such things. It was bad to be married.” Giving Gabriela idiot diction and seven word sentences, deploying obvious bird in cage, tight shoe, flower in a vase metaphors to suggest her free-spiritedness and referring to her as a child was simply not convincing.

But, I still enjoyed every minute of reading this book. The attention to generations and whole-town atmosphere is not unlike Garcia Marquez; but this book is lighter, less deliberate and totally rooted in reality. ( )

Sadly I lost my review of this book in the Great Deleting Every File in My Documents Error of 2003. I remember liking this book, although the characterization of Gabriela verged on the borderline between empowered woman testing the social norms and sexist pornographic fantasy. I decided that Gabriel personified the quote from many a bumper sticker "Well behaved women rarely make history." This was a good book about changes coming to a traditional Brazilian community. ( )

Beautiful. My favorite read of the past several years. ( )

A life-changer. I read this book for the first time in 1976, in Brazil, on a two-month vacation with a former flame. We spent a week in Ilheus. He's gone now, but the magic of this story has never paled. I re-read it often. Still my favorite of all Amado's astonishing novels. ( )

Amado's wonderful novels should be more popular than they are.