Symphony in White Jenny Shank Daily Camera (Boulder, CO) de 05.07.2010 Adriana Lisboa is a Louisville, Colo.-based writer and translator who was born and raised in Brazil. In 2003 she won the José Saramago Prize for her novel "Symphony in White," which has just been released in an English edition, translated from the Portuguese by Sarah Green. "Symphony in White" is an elegant puzzle box of a novel that explores the lives of two sisters, Clarice and Maria Ines, who grow up in rural Brazil before each, in turn, is sent to live with an aunt in Rio de Janeiro to complete her education. The devastating secret that ended the sisters' childhoods and their closeness to each other is gradually revealed in this skilled narrative that revisits certain key images and scenes repeatedly. Its graceful prose feels like waves returning to lap against a single stretch of shore. The reader's perceptions of Clarice and Maria Ines shift with each iteration of these scenes. Are these women prudish or uninhibited, cruel or fair to the men who love them, bad daughters, or righteously callous toward their parents? "Symphony in White" will make you change your mind about the answers to these questions a dozen times. The novel opens on the girls' family farm on a hot summer day over thirty years after Clarice and Maria Ines first left their parents' home. "The muggy summer afternoon floated up from the road in dust. Everything was quiet, swollen with drowsiness," Lisboa writes. The vividly evoked setting of rural Brazil is one of the many strengths of "Symphony in White." Lisboa transports the reader to this world of bougainvilleas that "bloomed wildly, almost aggressively," botflies and chigoe fleas that work their way into children's bare feet, and papaya, guava, and acerola trees. "Submerged in the night," Lisboa writes, "the trees seemed to be half-asleep spirits, swaying in the light breeze, or possibly of their own will. Fireflies twinkled in the tree branches, and far beyond, the countless stars." Although the setting and the writing are lovely, some ugly events occur in "Symphony in White." One day when Clarice is thirteen and Maria Ines is nine, Maria Ines sees "a masculine hand" touching a naked girl. We don't learn until much later who was involved in this scene. When Clarice is fifteen, she is sent to Rio de Janeiro to study, and on the day before she leaves, after her birthday party, her friend Lina is raped and murdered. Clarice and Maria Ines, from a more privileged background than Lina, seem to have escaped her sad fate. But just how lucky they really are isn't so clear when all the secrets in "Symphony in White" are revealed. The book moves back and forth in time fluidly. The timeline is fragmented, but clear to follow. While Clarice is in Rio, a neighbor from her home courts her, and in a few years they marry. Maria Ines then takes Clarice's place in their aunt's apartment, and she begins to study while engaging in a clandestine, passionate affair with Tomás, a boy who lives across the street from her aunt. Tomás is studying to become an artist, and Maria Ines reminds him of the dark-haired woman, dressed in white, who is the subject of Whistler's "Symphony in White" series of paintings. While she carries on with Tomás, Maria Ines' second cousin courts her, and in the wake of her mother's death, they marry, leaving Tomás behind. While Maria Ines completes medical school, becomes "a mediocre physician," and has a daughter, Clarice has no children or profession. Lisboa doesn't reveal all the motivations behind the sisters' decisions, actions or lack of action until the end of the book. At one point Lisboa writes about what the sisters' great aunt thinks when their mother dies. "It was upsetting when generations subverted time like that, disorganizing it," she writes, "Nieces dying before the aunts." "Symphony in White" is a novel built out of just such subversions and disorganizations of time, a gratifying riddle for readers to savor and think through. Jenny Shank's first novel, "The Ringer," will be published by The Permanent Press in May 2011. She lives in Boulder.