The Scent of a Lie, by Paulo da Costa

This book had been on my bookshelf for a while, a gift by my brother, an artist in the art of finding books and CDs that nobody else knows about. This book was an amazing find and I am so taken by it that I am going to dedicate it at least five postings. I must say right now that I do not know the author, I have nothing to do with him and I didn't even knew of his existence before yesterday when I felt like reading something and there it was, one book in the unread section of the shelf that seemed promissing.

Paulo da Costa was born in Luanda, Angola, when the country was still a Portuguese colony. He moved to continental Portugal and lived there in the Beira Litoral region until he decided to visit Canada (in his early twenties?) following a Canadian sweetheart. He decided to stay and now resides in Calgary, Alberta. The Scent of a Lie is his first fiction book, published by the Ekstasis Editons of Calgary. The back cover of the book says:

Set in two charismatic towns in Portugal, The Scent of a Lie is a “magic realist” book of fourteen intertwined stories, which can be read as a novel in fragments. Beneath the naturalism of the settings lies a metaphysical longing, like the scent of a lie. Characters weave in and out of their inter-connected lives in a lyric prose reminiscent of Marquez, Fuentes, Alvaro Mutis and Paul Bowles’ Latin American tales, skillfully rendered in subtle tones. The Scent of a Lie is a remarkable debut collection of stories told with the eloquence of a true storyteller.

I don't think this quite reflects the quality of the book. I also believe that "magical realism" was kind of pushed to the book to try and associate it with South American / Latin writers because they are the so  famous in North America. May be this is unfair but  The Scent of a Lie can stand by itself, there is no need for the confortable support of "magic realism". In fact, I have read somebody who said that she was reading the book and could not find the "magical realism". When I was reading it I would compare this and that to certain authors but then I think that any book is prone to that kind of association.

I would also like to say that this first book published in Canada was having some problems to get a second edition (!!!) and was also having problems finding a publisher in the author's birth country (!!!). Paulo da Costa has already written a second book of short stories and incredibly enough also this book is waiting for the decision of a Canadian publisher (!!!) From here I plead: publish this author!

Here is my Amazon review of this book!

I will write about the book itself and its short stories in my next postings, today I can only link to Paulo's website and offer the suggestion to visit and read the short stories posted there: Pleasant Troubles and Palms. It is also possible to read his fiction in the Cafe Irreal website, an online magazine of International Imagination: the Aqua Libera Trilogy . Or you can hear the audio story Robalo Silva's Dream.

Here is Paulo's bio:
In the morning Paulo da Costa wakes up to a flat Canadian prarie. Suspecting the truth like the eye has a curve, he then sits down and begins writing.
Paulo da Costa was born in Luanda, Angola, and raised in Portugal. He has resided in Alberta, Canada, since 1989. His short stories and poetry have been published in Canada, Portugal, Australia, New Zealand, U.S., Brazil, and France. He is the general editor for Filling Station, a Canadian Literary Magazine. As an English translator he has published work by Mexican, Angolan, and Brazilian poets.

This is an interview that I have taken from Paulo's website, originally published in the Calgary Herald, Oct. 19 2003:

Calgary writer Paulo da Costa was born in Angola and raised in Portugal, before coming to Canada in 1989. His first novel, The Scent of a Lie, was awarded the City of Calgary W.O. Mitchell Book Prize and the Commonwealth Writers Prize for best first book.

Q: Why are you a writer?

A: There's two parts -- to make sense of the world and to explore the different facets of life through different characters' eyes. It's like living different lives by entering other people's perceptions and points of view. The other part of writing I find appealing is the fact I can imagine different worlds, different possibilities of human experience through the imaginative process.

Q: What sparked the idea for your most recent work?

A: The Scent of a Lie was a natural book. It was perhaps a deeply embedded memory or experience of a world past -- perhaps as seen through the eyes of me as a child. The book is set in Portugal and it's a time of transition when it went from a very agriculturally based, almost medieval society, to a technological society and in a very short span of time. I was fortunate to have witnessed the transition in my childhood.

Q: At what point did you consider yourself a writer?

A: During my early schooling part of studying Portuguese involved writing a composition every week. As I was growing up, my mother was a teacher and she always said I wrote very well. One discounts moms because they are biased.  In Grade 5 I wrote a story and my teacher was so impressed that he showed it to every other teacher in the school. He sentenced me to writing by saying 'One day you'll be a writer.' That stuck with me. Though I didn't take it seriously then, it was the seed.

Q: Who are your biggest influences in writing?

A: I tend to be a reader of poetry -- e.e. cummings. After I wrote The Scent of a Lie, friends said 'You should read people like (Gabriel Garcia) Marquez and then I realized there were resonances, but they weren't conscious because I hadn't read him at the time. Poetry is my literary foundation and that's why the book tends to have that lyrical tone. I tend to read a lot of European and African writers. Mia Couto is one, he comes from Mozambique.

Q: Do other disciplines, such as music for instance, influence your work?

A: In the obvious sense of the musicality of language. The music in the book would be connected to the Portuguese language. I often read something in Portuguese before my readings to let the listeners hear the cadence and the music of the Portuguese.

Q: Why are you here?

A: I've lived in Calgary since I arrived in Canada in 1989. I think Calgary is a very supportive writing community. In official terms, the arts have very little support in the province. It's a shame because we have incredible writers. Because we are such a small community and there's such a diversity, we have a lot of co- operation and contact between writers. It's a very generous community in helping each other out. Being in Calgary was crutial to grow as a writer. Unlike large places such as Toronto, New York and London, England, where you can be lost in the anonymity of the arts, Calgary is small enough to provide that continuous support that's necessary to a budding writer.

Q: What's on your bedside table?

A: I'm rereading The Selected Poems of e.e. cummings and Mia Couto's Vozes Anoitecidas. I read and write in Portuguese, so I often have books in both languages lying around.

Q: What is the latest book you've read?

A: Blindness by Jose Saramago. He's a Portuguese Nobel Prize winner and it's one of the best books I've ever read. It's available in English.

Q: What novel do you reread most?

A: Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being. It's like magic, and that's why people might return to works of art. There's something there that isn't quite tangible, but still draws one again and again like a fountain of water. It's not something I would be able to articulate clearly, but why does one look at the moon consistently?

Q: What do you do when you're not writing?

A: I'm also a translator and I collaborate with magazines overseas. I'm also the editor of Filling Station Magazine in Calgary.

Q: What is your next project?

A: It's a novel set in Brazil in a very small town and will probably have to do with the perils of globalization. That's as much as I know.  I let the characters and the story tell itself. It's an adventure and I don't know where it takes me.

His contact is palexcosta@hotmail.com.
He also seems to have 3 webpages: I here, II here and III here. The last one is of course the most recent one, but strangely enough the last one I found.

I need to say that Paulo da Costa is also a poet, but I haven't read any of the poems and I will not be focusing on his poetry here. On my next postings I will write about each one of the 14 short stories in The Scent of a Lie. Something else that must be said about him: one of his favorite authors is Mozambican Mia Couto that has written almost all the books in my "favorites" bookshelf...

Paulo's schedule is as follows (2005):
April 30 - Vale de Cambra, Portugal
May 7 - Fnac, Porto, Portugal
June - Salt Spring Island
June - Vancouver for the Portuguese Heritage month
September - Livraria Navio de Espelhos, Aveiro, Portugal
September - Lisboa, Portugal

Go meet him!

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