‘Crooked Plow’ by Itamar Vieira Junior (Review – IBP 2024, Number Nine)

Time for yet another intercontinental flight on our International Booker Prize longlist journey as we continue to rack up the air miles.  This time we’re swapping rural Poland for a plantation in Brazil, as we spend some time with an extended family and a community of hard-working farmers.  As you may have guessed, though, life on the land is never easy, and this will be no relaxing country holiday – time to roll your sleeves up and get working with that hoe…

*****
Crooked Plow by Itamar Vieira Junior
– Verso Books, translated by Johnny Lorenz
(digital review copy courtesy of the publisher)
What’s it all about?
Crooked Plow begins with the young sisters Bibiana and Belonísia discovering a knife in a suitcase kept beneath their grandmother’s bed.  Alas, the young girls’ playful curiosity leads to a lot of blood and, for one of them, a severed tongue, meaning the other must act as her voice for the rest of the family, and the community.  As they grow older, the two drift apart a little, but family is family, and they’ll eventually grow closer again, helping each other when times get tough.

Of course, on the plantation that is their home, times are rarely otherwise.  The families of the black migrant workers may be happy to have permission to live there, but that’s pretty much all they have.  Forbidden to build anything other than mud huts, they must toil (unpaid) from Sunday to Sunday, snatching an hour or two from their own time to cultivate crops around their homes, most of which is then confiscated by the overseers.  Change is in the air, though, and as the years pass, the younger generation starts to question the status quo, wondering why life has to be this way, and what they can do to improve it.

Itamar’s novel is an enjoyable story told in three parts, by different people.  Bibiana sets the scene, introducing us to the plantation and her family before a grown-up Belonísia goes on to describes all the changes, arrivals and departures that have occurred over the years.  The final section is then told by a more unusual voice, recounting more dramatic events on the plantation as time and history finally catch up with it.

In some ways, Crooked Plow is a conventional multi-generational family drama, with the focus on the twins and their father, Zeca, a respected elder and faith healer.  Several scenes show the meetings where he is possessed by ‘saints’, and each section has us gradually learning more about him and his gifts.  One of the more interesting aspects of the novels is how we’re told about the faith of the plantation community in a place where the Christian church has little foothold.

The plantation itself is where virtually all the action takes place, somewhere many of the workers are grateful for what they’ve been given:

Água Negra was a piece of land between two rivers that almost enclosed it, forming something like an island in the heart of the Chapada Velha.  Workers would make their way here in search of a place to live when drought struck.  They were brought by the farm manager, or by workers who’d already settled in and were calling their brothers and compadres to join them.  Others arrived singly, carrying out the trek on foot, to make a life here with the permission of the landowners.  For many years, Água Negra was blessed with water and plentiful crops in the otherwise dry sertão of northeastern Brazil.
p.152 (Verso Books, 2023)

Sounds good?  In reality, it’s a den of exploitation, virtual serfdom and perpetual suffering, with the owners and managers squeezing work and crops out of the workers.  They’re poor people who know no better, and are too scared to move out into the unknown to try their chances elsewhere.

However, this is a situation that changes over the course of the novel, and the twin’s cousin, Severo, proves to be the main catalyst.  He’s the centre of all the unionism and activism, stirring up dissent and raising hopes among the youth of a better life:

Severo returned to the topic of leaving home, heading down that road away from the plantation and pursuing our studies, trying our luck; he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life in drudgery at Água Negra.  “There’s no opportunity here,” he said.  “It’s time to get out; come with me.” (p.67)

The people in charge are not likely to take this attitude lightly, soon intimating that certain folk should learn their place, before they’re put back in it…

While everyone on the plantation is exploited, it’s the women who get a particularly rough deal.  The second section, Belonísia’s story, describes her experience of marriage, and that of one of her friends, who suffers from an abusive husband, with the custom of non-interference meaning most look the other way when men beat their wives.  This hard life takes its toll, and there’s many a mention of young women old before their time, with grey hair, haggard faces and drooping breasts from nursing child after child.

It’s not all negative, though, and one of the brighter aspects of the novel is its focus on community, whether they’re family or not:

After all, my people and Maria’s people, like so many others, had arrived from distant places, but gradually we became kin; we were children of the same midwife, or we were connected through godparents, neighbors, husbands, and wives; through in-laws and cousins and even through our enemies.  many of us had married within this community and had become true relatives, relatives by blood and affection.  Others were like adopted family.  And so our hearts commanded us to share what we had with one another, and that’s how we survived the most arduous difficulties. (p.128)

Throughout the book, we’re shown everyone sharing food, helping when people are sick and attending funerals and wakes, and another nice touch involves the first television on the plantation.  The community spirit is strong here as people take the battery to town to be recharged when its flat, with a host of people cramming into (and lingering outside) the owner’s house to watch together!

Despite these warmer moments, though, Crooked Plow is very much a story of hard lives and violence.  Featuring a community of people deprived of their rights, only slowly catching up with the outside world, the novel is both a family drama and a look at the wider community.  By the way, I’m sure you’ve all heard of Chekhov’s gun – well, in the same vein, let me introduce you to Vieira’s knife.  It appears on the first page, but rest assured that’s not the last you’ll hear of it – some things have a nasty habit of turning up at crucial moments…

Does it deserve to make the shortlist?
I’m not convinced that this will make my top six, although with four books left to go, it is possible.  Like many books on this year’s longlist, there’s nothing particularly bad about Crooked Plow, and it’s certainly enjoyable in places.  It’s just that there’s nothing here that blows you away and shows you why it deserved to take one of the thirteen slots.  At time of writing, Alexis Wright’s Praiseworthy has just been shortlisted for both the Dublin Literary Award and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and it makes me wonder just where that kind of dazzling prowess is in this longlist…

Will it make the shortlist?
Again, possibly, and if I go with my gut, I’ll say it’ll make the cut – which says just as much about the longlist as about the book.

*****
Let’s leave Brazil behind and head off to Italy, where life will be somewhat more comfortable, if no less complicated.  It’s time to hang out with a woman with a relaxed attitude to the world as she reflects on life, and how it’s going.  More importantly, though, it’s not just her we’ll be meeting – get ready for an introduction to a slightly unusual family…