Shut up and kiss me

One of the country's most respected playwrights and an award-winning film screenwriter (Nunca Somos tão feliz, Policarpo Quaresma), Minas Gerais native Alcione Araújo made his literary debut in 1998 with the monumental novel "Nem mesmo todo o oceano," a Jabuti Prize finalist, which broadened his horizons as a writer with a solid career as a playwright. A columnist for the newspaper Estado de Minas since 2001, his first collection of chronicles, "Urgente é a vida," was awarded the Jabuti Prize in 2005. Now, about to complete 10 years of weekly chronicles, Alcione—who in recent years has dedicated herself to the role of novelist—brings together in "Cala a boca e me beijaja" (Shut Up and Kiss Me) some of the best texts published in the Minas Gerais newspaper. The 70 chronicles selected here—from approximately 500—are the result of a careful selection by PUC-MG professor Glória Gomide, and share Alcione's keen sense of observation. The title itself arose from an argument between a girl and her surfer boyfriend on the Leblon boardwalk, which caught the writer's attention. Tired of the bickering, she uttered the phrase, ending the fight. In this work, the author moves from the everyday to the fabulous, in a text that masterfully flows from narration to abstraction. With humor, often with sarcasm, sometimes with drama, he recounts stories from Rio, his Minas Gerais home, Leblon, and the world with the acuity of a poet. Snippets of reality, snapshots of life, snapshots. Erudite in simplicity, as in "Marginália," the author lets himself fall into the escracho of "O crachá," in which he navigates the etymology of the word to the discomfort caused by the object itself. In "Meus mortos jazem em mim," with his sensitivity at its peak, we see the unconditional love he reserves for the memory of those who made his history and are no longer with us—a pure tribute to the construction of life. In the beautiful "Probation," the fear of God and the absurdity of the biblical situation reveal that the writer is passionate about fatherhood—and life. Alcione speaks of dogs in buildings, sensual desires, rides for beautiful women, the man with the bicycle and loudspeaker who announces the streets, divorced women, inane conversations, and small gestures. He speaks of old and young, eternal lovers, the fear of the night, children's stories, and Bluebeard. But no observation or word is chosen at random, which ensures that his reader—whether adult, young, or adolescent—always sees themselves within his chronicle. "Cause your mouth and kiss me" is, in the words of Ignácio de Loyola Brandão, who pens the book's blurb, "to sit back and let time pass." And he warns: "Read on time without any scheduled commitments. Or you'll miss everything you've planned."