Book review of A.H. Brunelli’s “The Smile Collector”
Book review of A.H. Brunelli's “The Smile Collector”
Brazilian author A. H. Brunelli kindly sent us his novel “The Smile Collector”, and we asked our library manager, Alistair, to review it. Here’s the result!
“…I cried for the fear of what was to come, I cried for the despair I felt in those days without knowing what would happen to us. But my tears were also of happiness, happiness for having found him again, happiness for loving each other […]”
Brunelli’s writing is characterised by the intensity of emotions. As Henrique, he feels everything as it happens in the moment, and he feels it deeply and unapologetically. When he writes about the love he feels for Maurizio and the happiness felt at days spent in each other’s arms, those feelings overshadow the hardships of the reality surrounding them. The novel primarily recounts the events of 1987, and the AIDS crisis looms over Henrique and Maurizio as the months go by. Despite that, the focus is consistently on queer joy: aside from a few instances where Henrique has to deliberately omit the romantic nature of his and Maurizio’s relationship from hotel staff and the like, neither of the men express any contempt at the life they are living as two gay men. The novel is filled with passionate yet natural intimacy and paints a world where being queer does not sentence one to the life of isolation. However, while the feeling of joy that Brunelli describes in his memoir is all-consuming, so is the feeling of grief — the ending of the novel is unexpectedly bleak. The tonal shift in the final chapters is effective, but it does not seem to carry with it the feeling of hope in spite of everything that is captured in the rest of the novel. Grief hits Henrique hard, pinning him to the ground, and the readers do not get to see him pick himself up again.
Additionally, I would like to point out the feeling of community that Brunelli captures. While the focus of the novel is on the love story, and Henrique’s friends are only present in passing, the support they give him when he tells them about his love, and the comfort they offer when he needs it most are heartwarming. Although some of his interactions with others during his time in Italy are rather unpleasant, most of his friends seem to have his best interests in heart, which adds to the hopeful image of life as a queer person created by Brunelli.
Alistair Theodore Aleksin
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