What a pleasant surprise! Having read and reviewed João Reis' admirable first novel translated into English, The Translator's Bride, I was expecting his second book available to readers of English, the novel under review entitled Bedraggling Grandma with Russian Snow, to be recognizably similar. Wrong!
Wrong by a Montreal mile. And that's Montreal as in the setting for Bedraggling Grandma (The Translator's Bride is set in Porto, Portugal). In point of fact, if someone handed me this nifty little pocket edition of Bedraggling Grandma
without the name of the author, it would have taken me a bit of time to
guess it was written by João Reis. Sidebar: I judge innovation a
strength in a writer, the imagination and skill to engage one's
creativity in new dimensions, never allowing oneself to be bound by a
previous work.
A prime clue might have been all the novel's
dialogue and action take place within an interrogation room, two
detectives on the case of a murdered young woman. Here's my rationale:
to pay the bills, João Reis translates novels written in Swedish,
Danish, Norwegian and Icelandic into Portuguese. And João told me
himself many of those Scandinavian novel are...you guessed it, crime
novels, detectives tracking down murderers.
I can imagine a
sensitive literary writer like João Reis spending so much time, hour
after hour, with those crime novels during the day then going to sleep
at night and having a jumbled dream of two detectives interrogating a
talking stuffed donkey - exactly what happens in Bedraggling Grandma.
As part of my review for Translator's Bride, I noted the novel was funny, ironic, waggish, caustic, roguish, tender and expressive. Actually, this description also fits Bedraggling Grandma. Therefore, I take back what I said initially since both novels do, in fact, share much common ground.
So
there he is, Bruce the plush donkey speaking to two detectives about
his "family" - Dad, Babushka, older brother Andrei, Alexei who always
carries Bruce around. Here's a snippet:
"Alexei had me in his
arms when we entered the workshop, Bruce said while sitting before two
police detectives, proceeding to describe with accuracy all the actions
and reactions previous to his witnessing of a murder, a hideous crime,
as a woman had been killed in a building on the other side of the street
from where Bruce dwelled, a woman in her 30s, as one newspaper would
erroneously call her, a woman in her 30s but who was indeed 29, had been
killed a few days before in her apartment, the police had no suspects
yet."
Notice two elements contained in the above quote: 1) Bruce,
the plush donkey refers to himself in the third person; 2) Bruce is
keen on precision and accuracy, making sure the detectives get it right.
Turns
out, it's a good thing Bruce possesses highly developed analytic
skills: one of the detectives, Detective Anderson, has read Tractatus
by philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. And the donkey can quote
Wittgenstein at length which comes in handy as the relationship between
language and reality is key in detective work.
Do you detect a
hefty dose of absurdity at play here? Let me just say if you like Samuel
Beckett, you'll enjoy this new novel by João Reis. The publisher's
blurb states: "One of the funniest novels you are likely to read." I
completely concur. Pick up a copy and take delight in turning those
pages. You never know, you could develop a deeper appreciation for both a
stuffed donkey and the philosophy of Wittgenstein. 
Portuguese author João Reis, born 1985
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