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Title: Heliopolis
Author: James Scudamore
Narrator: Dave John
Format: Unabridged
Length: 10 hrs and 16 mins
Language: English
Release date: 11-12-09
Publisher: Whole Story Audiobooks
Ratings: 3 of 5 out of 1 votes
Genres: Fiction, Contemporary
Publisher's Summary:
Born in a shantytown, Ludo leaves, and returns on the opposite side of its social divide. Now he sells unaffordable products to the underclass into which he was born. He has an obsessive love for his adoptive sister, while her husband is his only friend. This is the story of a man whose destiny controls him and takes him to the brink of madness.
©2009 James Scudamore; (P)2009 WF Howes Ltd
Members Reviews:
Great assessment of the urban class structure of modern Brasil
The title Heliopolis is both a metaphor for the action of the book and gives you perspective on where the characters are placed. The lead character, through whose voice we view the various scenes and people, was born in the Heliopolis favela, which by virtue of its name places it close to the sun (helios). That he has come to this place in his life is very logical and understood through the circumstances that unfold before us. The interactions between the classes is dramatic and really drives how the main characters operate.
Lots of dramatic pull between the haves and have-nots; lots of commentary by each group toward themselves as well as the other sector. Scudamore is a gifted storyteller who presents a whole host of surprises here.
Five Stars
A real atmospheric tale. Made you feel the heat on every level
Interesting story
Read this book, it was good, not the greatest book I ever read, but a good read of fiction that doesn't require a lot of thinking.
"How sure [other] living things were of their place in the world, while I was not."
Raised in Brazil, Japan, and the UK, author James Scudamore sets this novel in Sao Paulo, a city he obviously knows well, revealing his youthful enthusiasm for life, his sharp eye for injustice, and his hope for the future in a tale which follows the life of Ludo dos Santos from his childhood till about age twenty-seven. Ludo and his mother, a cook, were plucked from Heliopolis, the largest favela (slum) in Sao Paulo, and established permanently at the weekend farm belonging to Zeno "Ze" Generoso, the fabulously wealthy owner of a chain of supermarkets, his British wife Rebecca, and their daughter Melissa. As we know from the opening pages, Ze eventually adopts Ludo, schools him, and makes him a part of the high life.
Telling Ludo's story through flashbacks and foreshadowings of things to come in the future, Scudamore quickly establishes the atmosphere and the dramatic contrasts between the lives of the poor and those of the rich in a city with virtually no middle class. In a touching and revealing scene at the opening of the novel, Ludo, in his twenties, is killing time during a traffic jam before work, exploring a neighborhood in the process of redevelopment. A fifteen-year-old boy, a grifter, is begging for money from two women in the square. Egged on by Ludo, the boy then approaches the wrong person to ask for money, and disaster strikes. Though Ludo blames himself for what happens, the event is ultimately "just one more frenzied city drama in a thousand, to be forgotten and absorbed into the oozing traffic, and perhaps mentioned in passing over lunch."
Caught between the world of the favela, which he does not remember, and the world of the rich, to which he feels he does not really belong, Ludo is unsure of his place in the world.
