"The Maias" by Eça de Queiroz

The Maias: Episodes of Romantic Life is a book by the Portguese author Eça de Queiroz and is about a man who has his life completely turned around, he thinks, by a woman. Ultimately, he finds out some secrets that cause him to nearly have a breakdown and must find his way in world after knowing this incriminating information. It was first published in 1888 and is set during the 1870s and covers mostly the life of the Maias son, Carlos de Maia.

It was first published in English in 1965 and was translated by Patricia McGowan Pinheiro and Ann Stevens and Margaret Jull Costa pubilshed her own translation in 2007 which won awards for its brilliance.

Planning the reconstruction of the family home, Carlos de Maia and others, seek to rebuild the house back to its former glory. During this, Alfonso de Maia goes into a flashback and it is all about his own marriage and disillusionment. He has one son named Pedro who is a low-spirited and weak man who falls in love with a woman that his father does not approve of, and yet he marries her anyway. Pedro's wife cheats on him and took their daughter with her when she finally ran away. Pedro, now only having his son to keep him company, goes to his father's house with his kid and kills himself. His son, Carlos, now having nobody to care for him, stays with his grandfather.

Carlos is, in the present, a well-to-do gentleman and is organised to meet a girl whom his friend thinks he will like - her name is Maria. As their relationship grows so do the secrets surrounding Carlos, his father's suicide and his family secrets. Now, it is no longer the house that needs rebuilding, but definitely the family that need reconstructing as nobody seems to know exactly how anyone is related anymore. It is a heartbreaking and sort of disgusting novel when you find out all of the pieces and put them together.

I read this book a few years' ago as recommended to me by a friend I have who lives in Portugal. He suggested this to me because he thought I would like it if I enjoyed books like The House of the Spirits. I have to say, I was absolutely shocked the first time I read this book and every time I do come back to it, it is like coming back to a logistical nightmare in terms of communication and family.

The theme of honour seems to be really huge in this book - especially honour and reputation. When Carlos and Maria's relationship is found out by others it seems to be a completely odd subject to talk about and when they are threatened with other people being told, it seems like the relationship could be too dangerous as it would impact his honour and her own. Exactly what this is teaching us to do is read between the lines because, I'm not going to lie, Carlos is pretty clueless and then, disbelieves the accounts. It sort of begins when his father kills himself and the family lose a lot of their reputation because of the circumstances. It just grows and grows from there.

Ultimately, every single time I revisit this book, there is a sense of awe at how one relationship can send an entire family's legacy and reputation crashing down around them. Even when the most important ones for that are dead, there are still possibilities. It is a truly emotionally intense novel that really sums up the time it was written in: the Romanticist Era.