Brazil by John Updike Hamish Hamilton $255 Naomi Price THIS is a bit of a googlie for Updike to have bowled his devoted readership. Anyone waiting for another picaresque episode in the chronicles of Rabbit or hoping to see themselves reflected in Updike's great mirror of middle-class America will be caught off guard: Brazil is a tale of South American passion and death-wish devotion.
Brazil is about Tristao and Isabel, but it doesn't take a phonetic expert to shuffle round a few consonants and come up with the story of Tristan and Isolde transposed to a Brazilian beach in the 50s.
The story of Isobel from Ipanema and her variegated sex life is long-drawn out and melodramatic, good in parts but very erratic. Picked up on the beach, the unsullied fair-skinned, Brazilian beauty, the high-born daughter of an ambassador, falls instantly and none too credibly for Tristao, a child of the gutter.
When Isabel's uncle dismisses his wayward surrogate daughter's grand passion as a fleeting fancy for a bit of rough, he drives her irretrievably into her lover's arms.
The two families have nothing in common but their mutual disapproval. But grudgingly, Tristao's mother accepts the union, eventually delivering a gem of a piece of advice to her prospective daughter-in-law: ''Always make 'em pay before you do a fucking thing.'' Gradually Tristao's wild heart is tamed. Out of consideration to Isobel, he gives up thieving, and contents himself with carving the odd gringo with his razor blade just to keep his hand in.
But these raw scenes from the street do not sit happily with the predominantly precious tone of the novel, peopled by characters who, on first acquaintance, lose no time in telling each other about their souls or launching into a discussion of Marxist dialectics.
