Memória, Memória Começou a História

This book opens with the note: “Some people think that boys like nonsensical stories. Not so. Wonderful stories are never nonsensical. Otherwise, let’s see:”. Agustina simultaneously suggests her own conception of children’s tastes and the marvelous nature underlying this tale, which takes place in a rural setting and has as its protagonist a boy named Giz, short for Gisbergo. A cheeky, lazy boy with a prodigious memory which is, after all, the only meaning of his life, although he himself does not recognize it. And it is precisely for “selling his memory to the mugs” to a “bearded dwarf” that little Giz is transformed. “Either because he had suffered a lot, or because the world seemed new and exciting to him, Giz smiled and looked with pleasure at the rusty vintage shears that his mother never took out of her pocket. I don’t know if you’ve become a better boy. That’s not what I wanted to talk about. To be sure, no one can say what they want to talk about, because more or less we all sell our memory to the historian, or whoever the little man with the beard curled behind his ears is.” | Sara Reis da Silva