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I’m spending a few days in a Brazilian reading-world, with both this book, Orphans of Eldorado, and also Greg Grandin’s Fordlandia, which is about Henry Ford’s attempt to build a jungle city to provide rubber for his growing factories.
It has been interesting to follow 
Canongate’s Myths, a series which has attracted a variety of renowned authors to re-tell classic myths in modern form. Orphans of Eldorado by Brazilian writer Milton Hatoum deals with the myth of El Dorado, the elusive City of Gold.
Arminto Cordovil is the son of a shipping magnate, but a young man who has to make his own way in the world, having angered his father, apparently through a dalliance with his housekeeper Florita. His father sends him away from the family home, “the white palace in Vila Bela” and sends him to live in a single room with a shared bathroom in a pension in Manaus.
Almost straightaway, Milton Hatoum introduces mythical elements to the story, with an Indian woman by the river proclaiming how she had been seduced by an enchanted being and was now going to live with her lover, “deep in the river bed”. We realise early in the story, that to be brought up in the Amazonian basin is to be inducted into a world where exotic folk-tales mix with reality and imbue everyday events with a mystical significance.
Armindo spends his time studying and working at menial jobs until a few years later, his father suddenly dies. He returns to his home town of Vila Bela to attend the funeral, which is attended by a group of orphan girls from a local convent, among which he notices a particular girl, already a woman, the first sighting of someone who will capture his heart, with no effort on her part.
He comes into an inheritance and goes to live in the huge white house at Vila Bela, but is unable to resist seeking out more information about the orphan girl, a young woman of mysterious origin called Dinaura. His father’s housekeeper, Florita, continues to manage the house, and rebukes Armindo, saying, “her look was just a spell: she looked like one of those mad-women who dream of living at the bottom of the river”. But Armindo is transfixed by Dianura and begins to seek out opportunities to see her.
Continue reading Review: Orphans of Eldorado – Milton Hatoum
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