“Terrinhas”, the award-winning novel by Catarina Gomez, humorously addresses the urban-rural divide.

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Over time, Claudia comes to understand potatoes as a metaphor for life: when she discovers something about to rot, all she has to do is cut off the suspicious piece at the right time to save total waste. She became an interior designer, a completely urban woman with no connections. The countryside disappears into the past, a boring place where he spent his school holidays while his classmates went to the beach. Until she is surprised when a letter arrives telling her that an unknown uncle has left her an inheritance – and she discovers that she has inherited “country buildings”. What would that be? The second letter provides new details, however, to deal with the unexpected goods – and soon dispose of them – he needs to return to Arrô, the village where the roots he removed from himself are located.

This is the motto of “Terrinhas”, a novel by Portuguese Catarina Gomes, winner of the 2021 Agustina Besa Luís Visionary Prize. Arriving in the rural world, Claudia has to deal with a reality of unusual types and situations, generating a culture shock ranging from personal habits to vocabulary. “What the hell is a pucca? A swamp?” The strangeness intensifies when his nickname begins to spread and an ancestor’s story is brought to light, sparking resentment among the locals. Secrets you never reach, because even though it’s a fraction of the time that has passed, every distance becomes greater when we don’t fully know what came before us. “The little they told me about their past was enough for me. At that time, I had the feeling that parents were only made up of the present and the future,” the character muses.

By the way, mental fluctuations are the hallmark of the text. The author portrays Claudia’s confusion with a narrative voice that constantly wanders through the book, weaving in and out of digressions in investigating memory. The occasional mystery is emptied of suspense to make room for picturesque humour, which sometimes leaves feeling more meaningful to the Portuguese reader, such as an indirect story involving a subject sent away and Brazil as an exile. Likewise, the edition that preserved the orthography of the original language, with rural words to reinforce the inadequacy of the character, reflects the experience of immersion in the plot, creating some dissonances due to expressions and constructions typical of our mother tongue, but uncommon in the Brazilian language.

Essentially, these expressions contribute to what appeals to the plot: the dichotomy between town and country. And it is not only in the contradiction of customs, but in the psychological and social fields, the internal conflict of those who seek to belong to a familiar and strange environment at the same time, due to disdain for a reality different from their own.

So much so that upon discovering the disgrace of her lineage, the character seizes the inheritance as a debt, and begins searching for answers—and perhaps unconsciously, for compensation—making her bear the guilt that her former family members resolved with silence and abandonment. Going deeper, in this case, means looking back and giving clearer lines to life without which your life would not exist, bringing back to earth the value of the scale between beginning and end.

Although full of local particularities, “Terrinhas” presents a concept of memory and forgetting that dialogues with the global impetus to follow private paths, locate distant destinations, and erase footprints that lead back to origin. The future can be built individually, but in every past there are people who shaped our personalities, tastes and worldview, left a legacy and taught. Even if it’s about potatoes.

* Sergio Tavares is a writer and literary critic