The lonely demise of Dona Regina, the matriarch of the influential Leandro household, prompts her granddaughter Milene to analyze its circumstances so she will be able to clarify them to the remainder of her prolonged household, all of whom are out of attain on trip on the time. Milene, an opaque and guileless type, revisits the positioning of her grandmother’s demise, the household’s former cannery on the Portuguese coast. Her futile investigative efforts deliver her into the orbit of the Mata household, the present tenants of the cannery, who’ve turned it into their household compound. The welcome prolonged to her by the Matas, working-class immigrants from Cape Verde, contrasts (in nearly each measurable means) with the hand-wringing, anger, and annoyance Milene’s presence provokes inside her circle of relatives. Jorge manages to recapitulate lots of the points current in post-colonial Portugal—racism, staff’ rights, sexism, financial disparities, overdevelopment—inside the context of Milene’s creating romance with one of many Matas, however she by no means lets the didactic get in the way in which of the romantic. An nameless and enigmatic narrator propels a lot of the narrative whereas important points of Milene’s sometimes-puzzling character are slowly revealed. Current in each households are key actors and bit gamers dwelling a totally Twentieth-century life in Portugal: the White cannery scions are succeeded on their landholdings by the Black Matas, who’ve produced a pop star (tuna changed by tunes?). As translated from the Portuguese by the crew of Jull Costa and McDermott, who present an intensive introduction to the work, Jorge’s narrative ranges from the lyrical to the mundane however conveys the universality of a particular, familial place.