Flesh and Bone and Water, Luiza Sauma
Flesh and Bone and Water, Luiza Sauma
List: $19.99 | Sale: $13.99
Club: $9.99

Flesh and Bone and Water

Author: Luiza Sauma

Narrator: Kristin Atherton, Charlie Anson

Unabridged: 7 hr 50 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 06/20/2017


Synopsis

From an exciting new voice in literary fiction, a seductive, dazzling, atmospheric story of family, class, and deception set against the mesmerizing backdrops of Rio de Janeiro, the Amazon River, and London.

André is a listless Brazilian teenager and the son of a successful plastic surgeon who lives a life of wealth and privilege, shuttling between the hot sands of Ipanema beach and his family’s luxurious penthouse apartment. In 1985, when he is just sixteen, André’s mother is killed in a car accident. Clouded with grief, André, his younger brother Thiago, and his father travel with their domestic help to Belem, a jungle city on the mouth of the Amazon, where the intense heat of the rainforest only serves to heighten their volatile emotions. After they arrive back in Rio, André’s father loses himself in his work, while André spends his evenings in the family apartment with Luana, the beautiful daughter of the family’s maid.

Three decades later, and now a successful surgeon himself, André is a middle-aged father, living in London, and recently separated from his British wife. He drinks too much wine and is plagued by recurring dreams. One day he receives an unexpected letter from Luana, which begins to reveal the other side of their story, a story André has long repressed.

In deeply affecting prose, debut novelist Luiza Sauma transports readers to a dramatic place where natural wonder and human desire collide. Cutting across race and class, time and place, from London to Rio to the dense humidity of the Amazon, Flesh and Bone and Water straddles two worlds with haunting meditations on race, sex, and power in a deftly plotted coming-of-age story about the nature of identity, the vicissitudes of memory, and how both can bend to protect us from the truth.

About Luiza Sauma

Luiza Sauma was born in Rio de Janeiro and raised in London. After studying English at the University of Leeds, she worked at the Independent on Sunday for several years. She has an MA in Creative & Life Writing from Goldsmiths, University of London, where she was awarded the Pat Kavanagh Award in 2014. She has also been shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize. She is the author of Flesh and Bone and Water and Everything You Ever Wanted.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Esil on June 19, 2017

Flesh and Bone and Water is short and focused, just like its title. Andre was born in Brazil and now works in London. Through his first person narrative, we learn about what led him to leave Brazil permanently in his late teens. This was a good book to read on a lazy Sunday. Andre is flawed both as......more

Goodreads review by Felice on February 12, 2020

Luiza Sauma’s Flesh and Bone and Water read like a primitive high school essay that could possibly have be entitled: “My Memories of Growing Up and How I Ended Up Here.” Honestly, that title makes it sound a bit more interesting than it was for most of the novel. While there were a few glimmering mo......more

Goodreads review by Fiona on June 07, 2022

Heady. Raw. Moving. Amazing.......more

Goodreads review by Eric on May 18, 2017

Something about the liquid imagery and cryptic title drew me to this novel. London has a big Brazilian community so I was curious to read about that cross-cultural experience as well. The novel centres around Andre, a Brazilian man in his later years who has lived his whole adult life in the UK. But......more

Goodreads review by Autumn on January 13, 2018

Really interesting in places. Kinda predictable in others. Lots of teen sex and melodrama. Men's sex fantasies are boring and tired. Why not write this story from her perspective? That would be waaaaaaay more interesting. A totally new world for me, which is always a plus.......more