Each story in Fado and Other Stories becomes a fado, the literary equivalent of a Portuguese song “of fate,” an evocation of “a kind of possession by love and sadness.” Fierce desire—be it for revenge, love or quietude—impels Vaz’s characters, all of whom share Portuguese ancestry . . . Fado and Other Stories is a celebration of the drama of individual lives. With inventive lyricism, it explores the notion of a “grand event allotted to each person—only one, with every other major event a consequence of that.”
—New York Times Book Review
“Vaz creates life with words that can be as fierce as a whip while remaining sensitive to her characters’ yearnings, which beat like Portuguese fados: songs of fate and longing. Vaz’s ability to marry reality to the imaginative world of her characters . . . allows her to weave together the mysteries of love, family, nature, religion and loss. . . . Vaz fearlessly writes about the vacuums in her characters’ lives. She balances this with fantastical situations that question reality and are disturbingly funny.”
—Washington Post
“Fado and other Stories, in the end, rewards all leanings. It is like a heart-rending blues album by a splendid artist: The listener may not applaud every cut, but that doesn’t spoil the glory of the voice.”
—Boston Globe
“Vaz can induce in a reader a fine and effusive rapture when her characters, inflamed, are carried skyward by their emotions.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Life’s lessons are woven into many of these stories, but Vaz’s touch is always lights, suffused with reverence for whimsy and weird, serendipitous occurrences. Encounters with magic—sights, sensations, and sounds that cannot be explained give the book an unusual spark. Throughout, things of spirit collide with material reality and tantalize those in their orbit, with satisfying results.”
—Library Journal
Vaz, the winner of this year's Drue Heinz Literature Prize, believes that "stories keep us alive." Perhaps that is what gives the 12 tales in this work such urgency. Old world meets new as the book explores Portuguese American identity in places as disparate as Hawaii, California, and the Azores. "In My Hunt for King Sebastiao," Dean travels from America to Portugal to settle some family business. Along the way, he uncovers a number of long-hidden secrets. While despair is tempting, Dean refuses to give in to anger or depression. "Hope," he discovers, "is the most supreme form of defiance." Similarly, in "Undressing the Vanity Dolls," Reginald learns to let go of resentment so he can enjoy the company of a former mentor. Life's lessons are woven into many of these stories, but Vaz's touch is always light, suffused with reverence for whimsy and weird, serendipitous occurrences. Encounters with magicsights, sensations, and sounds that cannot be rationally explainedgive the book an unusual spark. Throughout, things of the spirit collide with material reality and tantalize those in their orbit, with satisfying results.Eleanor J. Bader, New Sch. for Social Research, New York
Throughout this collection, Vaz succeeds in creating unusual protagonists.... [The book] is a celebration of the drama of individual lives. -- The New York Times Book Review
Inspired by the lyric fantastic, a first fiction collection from novelist Vaz (Saudade, 1994), this year's winner of the Drue Heinz Literature Prize.
Vaz's tales rely often on the yeast of her songlike love for language, which can transform her prose, influenced by magic realism, into poetry. "Sex happens," she writes in the title piece, "the way a pearl is formed. It begins with a grain or parasitic worm that itches in the soft lining until the entire animal buckles around it." In "Island Fever," Vaz displays her strong visual sense and her wit: "The mouths in the crowd, including his wife's, were chattering like bivalve castanets." These 12 linked stories about Portuguese émigrés from the Azores also rely on the force of improbable events to propel them forward. In "The Remains of Princess Kaiulani's Garden," a laundress with extraordinary powers at the ironing board positively affects the lives of her customers: "One old lady put on a skirt ironed by Elena and could do cartwheels. . . . A priest who had sent in his collars to be starched preached the best sermon of his life." Vaz can induce in a reader a fine and effusive rapture when her characters, inflamed, are carried skyward by their emotions. "Math Bending Into Angels," in this vein, shows how love and an incurable spiritual hunger lead a woman to turn into an otherworldly sprite. In other tales dealing with more worldly matters, the writer's whimsy sometimes fails to persuade: an ease in Vaz's luscious lyricism can, in an earthly context, appear too pretty; with her head turned by metaphor, the author comes across as unable to take reality seriously. At such times, she lacks conviction in the primal logic of an unreasonable fate that guides the major magic realists. She's also more sentimental than they, and her language can seem contrived, lacking a fundamental emotional connection with the lives she describes.
Still, when the theme of a story is in balance with its style, the result is elating.
