The Natural Order of Things

Description

"A diabetic teenage girl in a Lisbon apartment complex is kept awake by the whispered childhood memories of the middle-aged civil servant lover she despises. Her father, once a miner in South Africa, is now reduced to dreams of "flying underground." An officer in the pre-revolutionary army is tortured in prison on charges of conspiracy, plagued by memories of his illegitimate sister, locked away to live as a ghost in the attic like Bertha Rochester in Jane Eyre. A secret policeman, who has abandoned his sanity to teach hypnotism by correspondence course, unwittingly holds the key to their secret histories."--BOOK JACKET.

First Sentence

Until I was six years old, Yolanda, I didn't even know my mother's family or the smell of chestnut trees that the September wind brought from Buraca as sheep and goats scurried up the road toward the abandoned cemetery, goaded by an old man wearing a cap and by the voices of the dead.

Subjects

Other Editions

• The Natural Order of ThingsHardcoverGrove Press2000-02-01
• The Natural Order of ThingsPaperbackGrove Press2001-06-09