[The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas / Epitaph of a Small Winner]
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LET THE DEAD TELL THEIR STORY.

Brás Cubas, a seriocomic persona, died on a friday afternoon in August, 1869 and is now telling us his Memoirs. You heard me right, our narrator is dead, and the accounts of his life come to us from the beyond.
You guessed it, this is no ordinary book. 160 chapters crammed in 203 pages. We have everything to believe that it won't work, yet it does. Beautifully.
Now, much like this review where I'm addressing you directly, Brás Cubas breaks the fourth wall and talks to his reader. Brás (or is it Machado de Assis) actually gives us a sense that there's no fourth wall to break. It's as if that's how it's always been. (May I remind you this was written in 1880. Hello! Postmodern much?). The writing is so captivating, at times the reader is even invited to fill up unwritten chapters in an active, creative and critical way. He openly parodies and ridicules the usual narrative methods. Subversive style, digressing thread... one needs to be fully engaged to survive such a whimsical, clever writing.
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"What we get is a digressive and fragmented account of an ordinary man's experiences, an account in which an incredibly irreverent and facetious narrator chattily addresses his readers at every step, challenging us to make our own sense of the inconsistencies of his unheroic life."
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Much like Machado doesn't care to satisfy the reader's urge to a consistant narrative, Brás doesn't care about the expectations of society.

"Be aware that frankness is the prime virtue of a dead man."
Machado de Assis, by means of his dead narrator, openly critiques (exposes) the 19th century Brazilian bourgeoisie. From the beyond, he creates an atmosphere where the "mot d'ordre" is: free reign. He thus goes on denouncing both the political and social realities of the said period ; and, indirectly, the reality of our own times.
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Sarcasm, cynicism, wit, eminent satire, and delightful irony, all are present in this recount of a wretched man's life (none other than Brás himself).
Born into a rich family, he grows up to become a devious devilish kid who will himself grow to become a pompous adulterer and a contemptibly mediocre adult.
That's how we follow the flat and mostly tedious life of an unapologetically unprincipled man. He did nothing in 64 years, or almost nothing, thus giving us a sense of the aimlessness of it all.
"Brás Cubas realizes that his century, along with the history of humanity with its ideologies, institutions, and images, is an illusion".
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His self conscious and self-depricating stance is ever so ambiguous.
Into the bargain, insights into the bleak human condition are scattered all along the book which gives a humane depth to the narration. We have in our hands a life, not a glorious one nor a miserable one. It's a flat common ordinary uneventful one. Like that of every one of us. We're born, we live, we die. Next!
"You great lascivious man, the voluptiosity of nothingness awaits you."
Here the author confronts us to our own inner abyss, obliging us to consider our own failures, to question accepted ideas and to reexamine our opinions. We are being criticised by a dead man. Ha!
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On a final note, I felt that the book was a bit longer than it should've been. But then again, maybe that's what Brás thought of his life.
Besides, we were warned: "the main defect of this book is you, reader".