Winner of the 2023 Sesc Award and the 2024 Jabuti Award in the Short Story category, O ninho , by Bethânia Pires Amaro, delves into an intricate mosaic of family imperfections and illnesses, unveiling the veil that idealizes the home as a place of emotional security.
Bethânia Pires Amaro's debut book is comprised of fifteen short stories, fifteen small masterpieces that delve into the complexities of family relationships, exploring the most fragile and disturbing corners that can inhabit a home. The author invites us to follow female characters who face various challenges, and through their stories, we are reminded that home, this strange nest, is neither sacred nor safe.
Socioeconomic poverty and the fragility of intimate connections are masterfully explored by the author, who, according to Sérgio Rodrigues—a journalist and writer who wrote the blurb for O ninho —debuts as "one of the best short story writers in Brazilian literature." These desacralized homes experience addiction, suicide, dysfunctional motherhood, abuse, and devastatingly real violence. And yet, Bethânia Pires Amaro's narrative sensitivity sustains us with the imperfect beauty that arises from everyday tragedy, and with the compassion that courts the despair of always living with one another.
"The risks of programmatic and engaged literature don't even begin to be hinted at. It's just literature. And there's still much to say. For example, the author's sensitivity in capturing what is profoundly Brazilian in social environments situated between the middle class and the lumpenproletariat is remarkable. Her sentences and scenes, ingeniously modulated, never strike a false note or let the narrative tension falter. Here, the overflowing energy of her debut works somehow coexists with the confidence of a veteran who has decanted the wisdom of millennia." - Sérgio Rodrigues
"In the first story of this book, Bethânia Pires Amaro pushes the boundaries of motherhood stories by including a devastating element. From that moment on, the reader will be unable to put the pages down. We finish each story thinking the next one couldn't be better, but we are surprised again. [...] Bethânia embraces her characters. I want to embrace her too: what a thrill to see the birth of a brilliant author." - Giovana Madalosso
