Review–Brazilian Odyssey by Stephen Murphy (PC Staff)
I found Steve Murphy's novel, Brazilian Odyssey, engaging and placing the peril of the Amazon in modern day context. Murphy…
Brazilian Odyssey
By Stephen E. Murphy (Regional Director, Inter-Americas Region, 2002-03)
bookhouse publishing
246 pages
2022
$18.95 (Paperback)
Reviewed by Stephen Foehr (Ethiopia 1965-66)
It’s a forever story, little guy armed with idealism takes on big, bad, and corrupt. This evergreen theme kindles, and rekindles, the flame of hope. We keep turning the pages to find out about Evil vs Good, the tag team Greed/Power against Humanity/Right. Can justice prevail? Is it possible that personal integrity need not be a sacrificial lamb on the altar of you lose, I win? Do the good guys have a fighting chance?
The destruction of the Brazilian Amazon is a reoccurring headline of doom; the oxygen-giving rainforest decimated for profit; the indigenous peoples murdered for their land, their way of life transformed into poverty and cultural extermination. American professor Luke Shannon takes a group of students from Seattle University on a study mission to investigate the effect of Big Business Agriculture on the Amazon rainforest. The is the premise of Stephen Murphy’s novel, Brazilian Odyssey.
One of the students, Tatiana, a native of the Brazilian Amazon, has her own agenda: To revenge the murder of her cousin, a leader against the assault on Guajajara tribal land by agricultural corporations supported by government policies. She was “returning to the shrine of her bloodline and her tribal past,” Murphy tells us. In the mix is a Columbian drug lord, a muckraker journalist on the government’s hit list, a bent senator who is the president’s son, and a Brazilian professor/reporter ardent about fate of the environment, also on the government’s watch list. This is a promising stew for the author to conjure a satisfying feast of intrigue.
The narrative jostles along, a raft floating downstream toward the excitement of promised rapids, but gets hung up in riffles, preambles that never deliver a satisfying thill, either in action or in emotions. The students never go into the field to see the effects of Big Ag on the rainforest. Their brief stay in Brazil is nothing more than a meet-and-greet, and eat in restaurants. Their professor also does no fieldwork, but relies on informants—and the author’s own background of knowing.
Murphy lived in the Brazil for years as an investment banker and consultant to firms expanding in South America. He knows the alliances of corruption between government, military, police, drug lords, and big business raptors. He connected with environment groups and the indigenous peoples that push back to protect the land and the right to live unmolested. Murphy also served as regional director, Inter-Americas, for the Peace Corps.
Murphy is good at describing the cities, living conditions, details of local lore and the food, which lends authenticity; for example, native cooks using the pirarucu’s (a fish) large tongue studded with sharp teeth to grate chicory roots. Clouds of words are atmospheric at the expense of good storytelling. Lines of tension fade behind the descriptions; plot ingredients separate out instead blending; emotions are told rather than shown. The reportage misses the point of fiction; to offer the experience of crossing the mountain pass before we cross it, to give us a feeling for the routes we might take, to paraphrase the writer, Joshua Rothman. Fiction gives the sense of how a journey feels; that sense is not fact but gives fact meaning.
Tatiana, a fervent environmentalist, is presented as a “Guajajara warrior demanding justice for her people.” But inexplicably, and unexplained as if parachuting out of the clouds, she lands in the bed of the Columbian drug dealer who, as a sideline, is aligned with criminals harvesting the rainforest prized hardwood and, through bribes, arranges the illegal export. He is portrayed as a businessman and a family man, and a martyred hero. He describes her as “his firebrand lover.” We must take his word, as the author never shows us her fire. She is enthralled with her lover, even rides in his private jet, a very environmental unfriendly form of transportation. She worries about the danger her lover puts himself in while doing his illegal business. He’s a gun-wielding drug lord with a predilection for thoroughbred race horses; violence is his business. Her loving concern is unconvincingly explained. The contradictions compromise the reader’s trust.
Chapters end with a tagline, obvious as a blinking arrow, to encourage the reader forward, a serial soap opera device. Frivolous adjectives clutter sentences (“angry waves,” “rumbling clouds”), needless sparklers that blind the reader’s imagination. Readers enjoy adding their own bits of color and personal flourish that put them in the story. An author should trust the reader to enhance the tale.
The plot is knitted together, rather than the story organically revealing itself. The muckraking journalist is patched in when an incompetent assassin bumbles the assassination. Tatiana goes off with son of her dead drug lord lover, a romantic rainbow that blossoms in the wrap-up-happy-ending. The professor, Luke Shannon, becomes the last-minute godfather to the son of man he had not seen for decades. He bathed himself in sentimentality as destruction of the rainforest continued at a record rate.
Stephen Foehr (Ethiopia 1965-66) is the author of numerous fiction and nonfiction books. His latest novel, BIX, Because I Exist, released in August 2022. (See Stephen Foehr.com)
Amasagenahu, Steve, terrific review.
I understand Steve Crabtree’s reservation about Steve Murphy’s latest novel, but I found the work interesting and authentic. Here’s my take: This is the third book I’ve read by Steve Murphy, and in many ways his best. His first was a memoir, his second a novel set in Cuba. Brazilian Odyssey, also a novel, is an ode to the rain forest and the indigenous people, and their supporters, who guard this sacred and environmentally critical land. There are heroes and heroines in the book, notably Tatiana, a student who loves the country’s indigenous people. The novel has many plots and subplots, perhaps the most critical, Tatiana’s desire to find the killers of her cousin, “the guardian of the rainforest.” She teams with a sympathetic reporter and her professor, Luke Shannon (who was the hero of Murphy’s Havana Odyssey) in her passion to bring her cousin’s killers to justice. However, as might be expected, her quest is strongly opposed by powerful interests who view the rain forest strictly as a source of wealth. They have no interest in helping find Tatiana’s cousin’s killers, protecting the rainforest, or the indigenous people who have lived there for generations. No, the Amazon rainforest belongs solely to them, or so they think. Among the “bad guys’ ‘ Tatiana and her friends must deal with are a Colombian drug lord, members of a São Paulo crime syndicate and big business, in particular Big Agriculture. One of the great things about Murphy’s works is how well he weaves real life into his arresting story. No surprise, because he spent years working in Brazil and other South American countries. In fact, as a young man living in Rio working for a bank, he embraced the people of the “favela,” the term for the people in the poorest of Rio’s slums. Most people run from them. In Brazilian Odyssey, Murphy supported his first hand experience living and working in Brazil with interviews of more than 100 Brazilians so he could accurately convey the situation that the Tatianas and 15 other heroes and heroines in the book face every day. Murphy writes with a controlled passion that enables his readers to clearly understand the truth of what is happening in the countries he sketches, whether Brazil or Cuba. Significantly, Murphy dedicated the novel to reporter Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira, who disappeared in the Amazon jungle on June 5, 2022. Who ordered their murders is unknown.
I found Steve Murphy’s novel, Brazilian Odyssey, engaging and placing the peril of the Amazon in modern day context. Murphy shows depth of experience in Brazil and knowledge of the Colombian context. Brazil is unique and it takes in-depth experience to understand it. Murphy captures some of the dynamism of Brazil which emanates from a throbbing Rio de Janeiro to megagopolis Sao Paulo (my invented word to describe Sao Paulo) where the Carrefour has 110 checkout lanes. Murphy captures the idiosyncratic nature of Brazil, the current challenges facing it. and the hope for the future. Although, who knows where Lula will take it?.
It was an enjoyable readable book and I look forward to his next.