James Scudamore's entrancing story of a man taken by business back to the favela of his origins, and finally to a sense of belonging, reviewed by Hephzibah Anderson. In Other rooms, Other Wonders Daniyal Mueenuddin Bloomsbury Dh78 As a boy growing up on a farm in Brazil, Ludo dos Santos would lay awake listening to the sounds of nightlife in the trees that fringed the estate. "Loneliness should be hard to come by in the forest, but the white noise of animals getting on with their business was never a consolation," he recalls. "It only reminded me how most living things were of their place in the world, while I was not." Fatherless Ludo spent his first few months in a stench-ridden hovel in Heliopolis, one of Sao Paolo's countless sprawling favelas. His lucky break came when the do-gooding wife of a supermarket magnate named Zé 'Generoso' Carnicelli took pity on them, hiring Ludo's mother as a cook and installing the pair in the family's weekend retreat out in the country.
Ze eventually adopts Ludo, priming him to one day take over the company, sending him to expensive schools in the city and eventually funding a business degree in America. None of this helps Ludo feel like he belongs. Nor does it stop him from falling in love with Ze's daughter Melissa, the plucky dilettante he's been raised to call "sister". It isn't that Ludo is unaware of how lucky he is. He can't begin to think of how things would have turned out had he grown up in Heliopolis. But despite his gratitude, he is unable to find any value in the trappings of his good fortune. Instead, he responds to the confused reality of his fairytale fate by increasingly reckless risk-taking.
When we meet Ludo, he is 27 years old, careless about security in his apartment, barely bothering to show up at the office where he glories in the title of marketing executive, and indulging in a full-blown affair with Melissa, who is now married to his best friend. When Ze decides to open a chain of budget stores in the slums, Ludo is called in to concoct a marketing strategy. Though he has no memories of Heliopolis, he realises that those around him have never forgotten where he comes from.
In the well-paced drama that ensues, he finally gains a sense of belonging and solves the riddle of his paternity - but not without first falling prey to violent gangs, favela drug lords, and his own newly awakened conscience. Throughout, the novel's vividly sketched city backdrop threatens to overwhelm its characters. Because it's cheaper to build anew rather than knock down the old, derelict skyscrapers become vertical shantytowns, while the super-rich, terrified of becoming kidnap victims, barely touch the ground, zipping between their high-rise apartments and offices via helicopter. On Friday nights, the skies darken as the wealthy take off for the weekend.
"Town planning never happened: there wasn't time," Scudamore writes. "The city ambushed its inhabitants, exploding in consecutive booms of coffee, sugar and rubber, so quickly that nobody could draw breath to say what should go where. It has been expanding ever since, sustained by all that ferocious energy. And here, just as in the universe, anything could happen." Though what happens isn't altogether unpredictable, it is driven by that same ferocious energy. Attempted knifings, shootings, car crashes - all occur within the first few pages.
Scudamore's award-winning debut, The Amnesia Clinic, depicted a troubled coming-of-age in Ecuador. This solid second novel shares some of its themes, though urban urgency replaces dreamy charm and it resonates with echoes of Dickens and Murakami. Early on, Scudamore notes the gaudy beauty of Sao Paolo's pollution-enhanced sunsets. Despite some glib humour and an occasional lack of depth, Heliopolis successfully conveys the hope and tenacity that mingle with the city's stench and fumes.
