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Reviewed by Jamie Michele for Readers' Favorite
In Marcus Conter’s A Light in the Silence, Brazilian musician Mateus has settled in Laval, Quebec, when his father summons him back to southern Brazil. Maria, the mother who held her four sons together, died only three months before her widower, Marlboro, summons them home to announce that he plans to marry her sister, Ana. Mateus returns to find his brothers divided over the announcement as their father presents the marriage as a new beginning. The gathering reopens questions formed during their childhood above Lojas Marlboro, the department store that made Marlboro a celebrated businessman. Arguments over inheritance soon bring old grievances into the present, leaving Mateus to reconsider the silence that once helped him endure his father’s temper. He must decide how far he will go to protect the family history Maria left behind.
Marcus Conter’s A Light in the Silence is a fantastic literary family saga, and Conter does a great job of giving every relationship a history that reaches across decades. Mateus is the type of protagonist readers will want to follow, and his quiet observation makes every family confrontation feel so much more intense as a result. Conter completely fleshes out Marlboro, and especially the Lojas Marlboro, during Brazil’s hyperinflation, where fabric prices change twice daily as his commercial instinct turns the store into the standard by which he measures each son. Cezar has an entire presence as Mateus’s cousin, who became his closest childhood friend. Their conversation in a Porto Alegre bar shows how Ana’s rivalry with Maria reached into that friendship long before anyone recognized it. Beautifully written with an extraordinary sense of place, this is literary fiction readers will adore. Very highly recommended.
