It is the best work of Joao de Melo. A portrait of an Azorean family that could be modeled to any household at the time.
It is a brutal family saga, because it describes the poverty, physical and psychological abuse of a household in the Azores. It is the experience of the characters and three brothers, Nuno Miguel, Luis Miguel and Maria Amelia, from childhood to adulthood, describing the hell that was their lives until the "liberation". It is an exciting novel due to the writing that spares the reader, is raw and hurts our sensibilities in certain passages, but in good time. João de Melo doesn't gild the past, not sweetens, he subdues the words to pass feelings and emotions that not leave the reader indifferent.
The interesting thing is that this book is that could be transposed to the reality of any family frame. The mistreatment and abuse inflicted on children, hunger, child labor imposed by poverty and ignorance in an impoverished country. The exodus of islanders to the mainland is another issue very well described by the author, young people who went to seminary in search of a free education and a better life. There are plenty of Azorean and Madeiran when reading this book, the generation of the 1940th, feel really portray while reading this book so much so that they say it's their life story and some cry because it hurts to remember, even after a long time. A sociological and historical decal that generated one of the major novels of Portuguese literature and was deservedly awarded more than once. Good reading.
