The Migrant Painter of Birds

A young woman tries to piece together a coherent picture of her father from two childhood visits, other people's stories, and the few mementos he left behind. This is a very slow read with a plethora of threads from different time periods woven together in a less than direct manner to form a nebulous whole. It's interesting to see how the narrator's mind moves and how she folds events together to match some previously undiscovered fact, but it's sometimes difficult to follow along in the flow. What I'm mainly left with after reading is a profound understanding of "Saudade," the melancholic longing that so defines the Portuguese people and even if I am not a huge fan of the work itself, I am very grateful to have gotten such an insight show more into a mood that was previously a mere dictionary definition for me, especially since I read a lot of Portuguese fiction that tends to include at least some of this (for me) peculiar nostalgia. show less