Chronicle of the Murdered House

As a child, Brazilian literary giant Cardoso (1912–68) was obsessed with movie stars, played with dolls, and refused to go to school. As a writer he was prolific in several genres, including experimental theater. And in fiction, he abandoned the dominant regionalism for subjective introspection. This novel, published in 1959 and only now available in English, is the Faulknerian saga of a decaying patriarchal family in the southeastern state of Minas Gerais. One of the chief characters, Timóteo, is the family's obese, cross-dressing black sheep who confounds the traditional order of the sad backwater estate. With unconventional sexuality and insanity, the story of a family's disintegration is conveyed by various confessions and diary entries and is triggered by the marriage of Timóteo's younger brother. Valdo marries outsider Nina, a lively and unpredictable young woman from Rio who turns the dimly lit ancestral mansion upside down with her complaints about the servants, the weather, and the house itself. In Benjamin Moser's introduction, much is made of Timóteo's gayness, as if the gothic melodrama itself is not the primary draw for a modern American reading public.