According to the blurb on the back of this Penguin paperback, de Assis was Brazil’s greatest novelist. (To give you an idea of the timeline here, this was one of his last novels, and was written in 1899.) Never heard of the guy. To be fair, though, most of my background in Latin American authors was triggered by my high school Spanish classes, which would exclude this author. The world of Portuguese language literature is far smaller than that of Spanish language literature. Anyway!
Dom Casmurro (ie Lord Taciturn) AKA Bentinho is a resident of a very suburban Rio de Janeiro (so European – may as well been Lisbon) and this is the tale of how he got to be that way. He starts off as the only child of a very pious and wealthy widow, who has dedicated her son to the Church. Looks like he doesn’t have much say in the matter, but as an adolescent, he doesn’t have any better ideas. However, he becomes infatuated with a neighbor girl, Capitu. And then he meets his best friend to be, Escobar, at school. And thus the triangle is set. Then there is the impoverished but cunning uncle, who keeps trying to talk Bentinho into a tour of Europe, with himself as chaperone. It is he who mentions, after Bentinho’s mother’s death, that she probably be happy with just giving the Church a new priest. It wouldn’t necessarily have to be her son. A satisfactory substitute is rounded up, and Bentinho and Capitu are soon married. Escobar does seem to hang around the house a lot, though. Bentinho doesn’t know who to trust, and so becomes “taciturn”. Hmmm.