Dom Casmurro

Dom Casmurro 

by Machado de Assis

translation by Helen Caldwell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I enjoyed this novel. I discovered Machado de Assis back in college when I read Epitaph for a Small Winner (aka Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas) for a Latin American Literature class and was immediately a fan. I have read several of his other novels that have been translated to English (unfortunately I can't read Portugese) and have enjoyed all of them. 

The introduction in the edition I read was by Waldo Frank (dated 1952) and he explained that Laurence Sterne was a strong influence on Machado. This makes sense to me as the dry, quiet tone and the way the author steps out of the pages now and then to make asides, is similar. Dom Casmurro is told from the point of view of a man looking back over his life and telling us about it. He hints at the future implications of the events he describes, but until you get there in the story you don't know what happened. This builds a tension in the novel that propels you through it. 

“In ordinary life, the action of a third party does not free the contractor from an obligation; but the advantage of making a contract with heaven is that intentions are valid currency.” --Machado de Assis, Dom Casmurro

This book is on my Classics Club list.