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Title: Poor and unconvincing
Review: Brazil tells the predictable story of Tristao and Isabel, the ill-fated lovers, and John Updike is an able writer with clean and polished prose. Unfortunately the book is full of quite a lot of nonsense, including some very poor dialogue, and combined with the hard-nose realistic style, the end result is rather frigid. But my chief complaint is this: When someone calls his book 'Brazil' it should be safe to assume that the author has something important and truthful to say about the country. Updike's Brazil is stale and stereotypical, and none of the characters are even remotely believable as Brazilians. He misses the most important point about Brazil althogether: Its people are warm, caring, both passionate and compassionate. None of this comes through. This book is really not worth reading.
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