Wish had more time to give to this one. Writing is pretty fabulous. Story is meh.

Thanks to the publisher for the ARC.

Feast Days by Ian MacKenzie is the story of Emma, a young wife who follows her husband as his career takes him to São Paulo, Brazil. Unfortunately, I am not the reader for this book. For me, it seems to try a little too hard to be literary, poetic, etc. I am neither captured by the character of Emma nor immersed in the sights and sounds of São Paulo.

Read my complete review at http://www.memoriesfrombooks.com/2018/07/feast-days.html

Reviewed for NetGalley

Published by Little, Brown and Company on March 13, 2018

A married couple moved to São Paulo, a city “hairy with crime,” for the husband’s job. The wife, having no opportunity for Brazilian employment, is an observer. Emma narrates her observations of local politics and protests, the contrast between wealth and poverty in Brazil, expensive meals (unlike her husband, she would rather eat food than discuss it), her first experience as a robbery victim, the difficulty of mastering Portuguese, the lure of invented cognates, the glassy apartment buildings that resemble aquariums, and the country’s never-ending social obligations.

Feast Days is a detached account of Emma’s external observations mixed with more personal but still detached observations of her own life. Emma is not terribly satisfied with her lot, but at least while she’s in Brazil, she doesn’t seem inclined to make any changes to enhance her happiness, or even to voice her concerns, perhaps because she doesn’t know what changes she might desire or whether true happiness is attainable.

An affair is on offer, but it hardly seems worth the effort. Emma seems to think that sticking to marriage creates a history, and marriage is nothing more than a shared history of being married. A dull marriage, she thinks, is better than starting over, because nothing is more dull than revealing yourself in each new relationship, telling the same stories, getting fucked in the pretty much the same way by each new boyfriend.

Emma likes to talk, not because she has anything important to say, but because she enjoys “the lapidary construction of sentences,” syntax more important than content. Having no particular skills beyond an affinity for English grammar, Emma resentfully keeps the home and occasionally tutors prosperous Brazilians for cash. She also does volunteer work, helping Haitian refugees while marveling that the Brazilian government treats them well, having a more compassionate attitude about “shithole countries” than American politicians.

Emma is unenthused about the prospect of having a child, a source of largely unspoken conflict with her husband. Emma wonders why men are incapable of talking about anything but their work, and occasionally asks questions like “Is there a market for that?” to make herself understood. She ruminates on the phrase “the disaster of heterosexuality” as a possible explanation for being dissatisfied with her life.

Emma encounters a fair amount of sexism in Brazil, but it might not be as obnoxious as the sexism she endured at a Las Vegas engagement party hosted by her in-laws, where all of the gated community residents wanted to know about her wedding plans and how many children she would have. Nobody asked her whether she had a life; they assumed her job was getting married.

Collateral characters play their roles, but Feast Days is very much Emma’s story. She refers to her husband not by name but as “my husband” or, in flashbacks, “the man who would become my husband.” We learn a bit about Emma’s past from those flashbacks, and a brief chapter gives us a snapshot of her future, but the story’s focus is on Emma’s cabined life in Brazil. Unfortunately, that portion of her life is so uneventful that I would have preferred to read more about her past or future.

Emma loves words and so, I must assume, does Ian Makenzie. His use of words is more interesting than Emma, who is such an uninvolved observer that I found it difficult to warm up to her. She doesn’t seem to feel anything (other than ennui which isn’t really a feeling); she holds no fundamental beliefs that aren’t rooted in etymology. Feast Days appeals to the intellect, not the heart, but I’m recommending it for its prose and for the occasional insights it offers into a life of a woman who has been thrust into a role for which she is ill-suited.

RECOMMENDED

Written in a brutally honest tone, Feast Days recounts the story of Emma, a young woman who moves with her husband from New York to Brazil, where he works as a financial analyst. While protests rattle the country, Emma tries to find where she fits in, immersing herself in the arts scene, lunching with other expat wives and volunteering to help refugees who are fleeing poverty and war.

Feast Days (Little, Brown and Company, digital galley) is so honest at times it feels like reading a personal diary. As the county boils around her, threatening to break, so does her marriage, and Emma seems adrift and uncertain of her future.

This eloquent novel by Ian MacKenzie offers a look at the social layers of Brazil and expatriate life. It's a subtle examination of what constitutes a crisis versus what is simply the normal state of affairs.

In his novel City of Strangers, Ian MacKenzie highlights the harsh reality lived by a man who believes his present can be altered by his actions, while the city he lives in, is complicit in proving that his efforts change nothing and his life continues down a path that is unwanted and plagued with regret. With his new novel Feast Days, MacKenzie again sets out to show us how a city changes its people, while the city itself remains impassive and observant.

Emma is a young expat, uprooted from New York to Brazil when her husband is transferred to the overpopulated city of Sāo Paulo. From the beginning, Emma is uncertain of what her role is, what she is supposed to do as a wife whose life has changed so drastically. She states that the term expats use to refer to people in her same situation is “trailing spouse,” a term that is every bit as derogatory as it sounds, but Emma goes further and applies the word “ancillary” to herself, “a word that comes from the Latin for ‘having the status of a female slave.'”

That Emma is bereft is clear, but it is even more of an enigma to figure out what she really wants. She doesn’t seem to miss her New York job as a content writer for a cement company’s social media sites, but instead is nostalgic of the freedom it afforded her. In Brazil she becomes a housewife, a role she never wanted and socializes with other “trailing spouses” as a means of distraction.

However, Emma gradually becomes attuned to a city that is in constant political and social crisis when she and her husband (whose name is never revealed) are robbed at knife point outside an upscale restaurant:

‘Aliança,’ one of the other boys said. He meant my husband’s wedding band; I usually left mine at the apartment, on the advice of an ex-policeman. They were favela boys, dressed raggedly, seething with adrenaline and desperation. It was lucky for the boys that my husband spoke Portuguese—or lucky for my husband, or lucky for me. No foreigner without Portuguese would have known the meaning of ‘aliança.’

The robbery is a foreshadowing of later events that add on to the already convoluted state of Emma’s marriage that is aggravated upon their arrival in Sāo Paulo. Her husband wants a child, or accurately speaking, says Emma “multiple children, two or three, whereas the only number I was sure I was comfortable with was zero.” This disparity in the desire of offspring is an ongoing topic throughout the plot, while Emma does her best to adapt.

She is recommended by a colleague of her husband’s to work as an English tutor, and later by another acquaintance, to volunteer as a French interpreter for Haitian refugees at a church. While her husband works late, Emma is left often on her own to find her place in a city she finds both hostile and fascinating.

MacKenzie’s narrative could better be described as complex vignettes, forming pieces of conversations and events that are oftentimes non-sequential, which can sometimes be confusing and difficult to follow. However, MacKenzie makes up for it with a main character that evokes not only empathy but also a good deal of curiosity. Emma is not a whiner or a weakling; she attempts to make Sāo Paulo home in the best way she knows how, by merging with its inhabitants and trying to understand it from within.

When she participates in a protest that in the end turns violent, she sees first hand what it means to be repressed by a brutal police force, an attempt to silence the voices of those who hunger for change. She doesn’t fall into temptation when the lure of an affair presents itself, telling herself that in the end, it will not be worth the trouble to risk her marriage. Emma knows that her unhappiness goes deeper than a fleeting absence of amorous attention and that a sexual tryst will not alleviate it.

The ending of Feast Days is inconclusive, one that perhaps MacKenzie deemed fitting for a story that can’t be neatly wrapped tightly together. Emma’s story as an expat in Sāo Paulo is also the story of her as an expat within her own marriage, and within her own previously firm convictions. Feast Days poses the dilemma of being a stranger not solely in a strange land, but also inside our own lives.

The trials and tribulations of an expat in Sao Puaolo, pulls you into the saga and doesn't let you go.

Thanks so much to NetGalley, Little, Brown & Company, and Ian MacKenzie for the opportunity to read and review his latest work!

This is the story of Emma - a woman from NYC who with her banker husband move to Sao Paulo, Brazil, for his work. Emma is fascinated with language and ends up being a tutor of sorts to various people in Brazil - simultaneously trying to learn Portuguese while teaching English. Emma is also struggling with her husband about having children - she doesn't want to; he does. Brazil is in a state of civil unrest while they are there with many demonstrations happening, causing Emma to rethink her life and beliefs.

The writing in this book is wonderful, even though it may not be my style. You can really get a taste of being plucked from NYC and set into the strange world of Brazil, where everything is different complicated by the language barrier. However, I struggled to care much about the characters and it was a bit confusing when the back story was being told.

A homemaker due to her husband's job moving him out of the country, and not her desire to stay home, the main character is lost and wanders through her time abroad. With no real connection made with any characters, and time jumping around in the story as she fills in her background before this time, it simply ends because his job changes again and not because there was any growth of the characters. I struggled to finish this one and would have put it down without finishing had I not felt I needed to read the whole thing before reviewing.

This short novel fell short of the bar. Scattered, lackadaisical writing. Didn't enjoy it and took long to finish reading.

Feast Days by Ian MacKenzie is a novel about a young upwardly mobile couple transferred to Sao Paulo, Brazil. MacKenzie's first novel was City of Strangers and his fiction has appeared in The Gettysburg Review, The Greensboro Review, and elsewhere. He was born and raised in Massachusetts, graduated from Harvard College, and has lived in New York City, Ethiopia, and Brazil.

I do not review much contemporary fiction because it seems to be written for instant entertainment without much depth or lasting memory. Feast Days is something different and, yes like many reviews have already said, it does deal with a young American couple in Brazil. He is an investment banker and she is trapped in a foreign country without much marketable skills or a visa that would allow her to work. The descriptions of Brazil are accurate. The division between the rich in their walled complexes and the poor in their shantytowns is very clear. Among the rich Brazilians, there is also a status competition. Emma, the American woman, works for friends teaching English. Having a tutor is a status symbol, even if one doesn't really need one.

There is crime on the streets. There is corruption in business and government. There are protests and protests that turn into riots. Children of the rich are joining in the fight if not for the movement for the thrill. Haitian immigrants legal and illegal are protected by the parish priests and become the new outcasts giving the poor someone to target. A great deal is given to the division of the people and to the chaos of society outside walled complexes.

The most interesting thing I found and what kept me digging into the story is the narrator. The cover flap will tell the reader her name is Emma. You will only find her name once in the text. Her husband does not refer to her by name nor do her Brazilain friends. Perhaps she is just another American woman with no value except as a status symbol tutor or wife. Equally interesting is her husband. He is never referred to by name. When they were dating Emma refers to him as "the man who would become my husband." She addresses and refers to him as "my husband" throughout the rest of the book. No one addresses him by name. Perhaps he too is just another Yankee in a foreign country. There for a while then replaced with another equally forgettable person. This makes the book far more interesting to me than I originally expected. It added depth to the story that made it much more than just a story.