Book review by Victor Rui Dores Translated by Katharine F. Baker

            Álamo Oliveira’s mastery, resourcefulness and creative imagination are prodigious. Disconnected from trendiness, gatherings and literary groups, he continues writing from his native village of Raminho on Terceira to the world, in search of what is unfathomable in the human soul.

            In a back-and-forth relationship between narrative fiction and life’s course, this author’s writing is always a place of confrontation and resistance: of denouncing illusory truths, and renouncing the masks of an alienating daily life.

            In fact, in every one of Álamo’s works there is a literary discourse that casts its eye on the myths of the recent past, the uncertain present and the mist-shrouded future – that is, the critical, skeptical and no few times perverse questioning of reality. His most recent book is a good example of this: Os Belos Seios da Serpente [The Snake’s Beautiful Breasts] (Vale das Amoras, 2024). In the ranks of allegorical writing, this work is traversed by a biblical breath, or perhaps by a prophetic and evangelical wind, were Álamo Oliveira not deeply knowledgeable on sacred texts, with emphasis on the Song of Songs, which punctuates the beginning of each chapter in his book.

            Many of the Christian mythologies are embodied here, which somehow lends continuity to another of Álamo’s novels, Marta de Jesus, a Verdadeira (Letras Lavadas, 2014) – while not forgetting, either, what he had already experimented with in poetry in Os Quinze Misteriosos Mistérios [The Fifteen Mysterious Mysteries] (self-published, 1976). It is worth recalling that in another genre – drama – Norberto Ávila (1936-2022) had already traced similar paths with his Os Doze Mandamentos [The 12 Commandments] (DRAC/ SREC, 1994) and A Paixão Segundo João Mateus [The Passion According to John Matthew] (IAC, 2011), whose biblical references also have direct implications nowadays.

            In Os Belos Seios da Serpente we have as its main protagonist the elderly Azorean Eliseu dos Anjos, an emigrant who has returned from the U.S., the father of two, a widower and “writer of Bible stories,” a character behind whom Álamo Oliveira hides in order to criticize and subvert sacred texts, almost always with a humorous touch. And he does so with frequent (re)readings, (re)interpretations and (re)creations of episodes linked mainly to the Old Testament, updating them to the present.

            In this work, the biblical figures of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Joseph and Mary, Noah and Moses, Elisha and Elijah, Samson and Delilah, David and Goliath, Saul and  Jonathan, Jonah and Daniel, Solomon and Jeremiah, Isaac and Esau, Jacob and Rebecca, Esther and Judith, among others, find counterparts in contemporary figures.

            And this novel’s skillful ellipses and analepses (“flashbacks,” to use cinematic language), with unforeseen and unpredictable outcomes, are impressive: the Tower of Babel, and New York’s Twin Towers; the unleashing of wild animals in the Roman Colosseum, and the roped bullfights on the island of Terceira; the Promised Land of milk and honey, and the Beatitudes of the U.S. and the European Union; the kingdom of Sheba, and the wealth of Dubai; the plagues of Egypt, and the earthquakes in the Azores; apples picked in Eden, and in the village of Biscoitos; Judith, and Marilyn Monroe; David, and Elvis Presley; Holofernes, and John F. Kennedy; Nineveh’s beaches, and the “Sin City” of Las Vegas; biblical battles, and current conflicts between Ukraine and Russia, Israel and Hamas, and so on.

            Os Belos Seios da Serpente has as its leitmotif humanity’s fall brought on by the temptation from the snake, with all the attendant symbolism. The seductive Eve, Esther, Judith, Ruth, Queen of Sheba and Delilah (with “European Mata-Hari eyes”) give expression and substance to original sin.

            Beyond that, Álamo Oliveira’s thematic concerns with issues of the Catholic Church, of the faith and rejection of it, constitute the great dialectical metaphysics of his fiction, which is marked and shaped by his studies at Angra do Heroísmo’s Seminary. And as a man of the stage, he knows how to create theatricality and lend scenic atmosphere to this book’s narrative – for example, his description of the tent where Judith goes to seduce and behead General Holofernes as her way to free the Hebrew people.

            As a consequence, the inner tension between literature and religiosity always and forever inflames Álamo’s imagination – he is a transgressive and transgressing writer, always highly attentive to the social and political disputes in the islands, Portugal and the world. But beware: if this Terceira native’s writing is sometimes anchored in biblical text, he never does so in order to paraphrase it, but rather to produce an eminently ironic and ideological discourse on it – which is made abundantly clear in Os Belos Seios da Serpente.             Álamo Oliveira – with extraordinary attention to detail, a language dense with poetic values, the creation of a magical atmosphere, the use of seductive imagery, and an original rhythm – gives us in this book a beautiful portrait of the human condition on the world stage. And in so doing he rails against oblivion, as an author who enhances and brings his brilliance to Portuguese literature

We thank the Luso-American Education Foundation for their support.