That same tonal shift takes place again in the second story, “Homeward,” but it’s a wholly different kind of tale. Its peak can only be reached by foot with the easiest and the mot preferred route being from Achada do Teixeira but also the route from Pico do Areiro can be used though it is strenuous. With Martel's signature mixture of humor and pathos, these three stories explore the rugged terrain of grief.

‘The High Mountains of Portugal,’ by Yann Martel

An employee hangs works of art with "Grand Teatro" by Marino Marini (R) and bronze sculpture "Sfera N.

Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II. One loves, one loves, one persists in loving-the incubation period can be very long- and then, with death, comes the heart break. Thirty-five years later, a Portuguese pathologist devoted to the murder mysteries of Agatha Christie finds himself at the center of a mystery of his own and drawn into the consequences of Tomás’s quest. Martel is not in the business of providing us with answers, but through its odd, fabulous, deliberately oblique stories, his new novel does ask some big questions. His description of her as “warm and soft, and gentle and graceful and beautiful and caring” lacks any specific sensuous detail that might bring these characters or this moment to life.

The High Mountains of Portugal by Yann Martel | Goodreads

A very long sentence, anchored in solid nouns, with countless subordinate clauses, scores of adjectives and adverbs, and bold conjunctions that launched the sentence in a new direction--besides unexpected interludes--has finally, with a surprisingly quiet full stop, come to an end. What other themes do you find in the novel—-for example, how important is faith and how important is love in each of the three parts? The second section of the book takes place in Lisbon 30 years later, in 1938 (the novel abandoned for the sake of Pi was to be about Lisbon in 1939).That ill-conceived story conflated cute humor and stuffed animals for a cringe-inducing allegory about the Holocaust. A pathologist whose wife makes sense of Jesus' miracles through Agatha Christie mysteries (I SWOON and genuflect at his audacity here). The mountains also stabilize the climate of the country and act and provide a habitat for animals and plants. We must do the same with death in our lives: resolve it, give it meaning, put it into context however hard that might be.

The High Mountains of Portugal - Wikipedia

Although some readers will grow impatient with Martel's circuitous patter, when the conclusion arrives, the whole story snaps into focus for a vision of despair that's almost unbearably poignant. The journey he sets off on is a spiritual mission which, he hopes, will also aid his own psychic healing – he is mourning the loss of his servant-lover and their son to illness, and also seeking a "lost" (ape) crucifix referenced in some journals he finds after the family deaths. Martel continues his quirky romance with ideas, using three interlocking novellas to chew over religious revelation, human mortality, and interspecies communication, among other notions.The moral and spiritual implications of his tale have, in the end, a quality of haunting tenderness. This is a naive approach to fiction, granted, but a tough one, since intellect, cleverness, charm, wit, tact, even fact cannot conceal incredibility. Nevertheless, this allegorical tale drives home the ephemeral nature of beauty and joy and the thin line we all walk between normalcy and madness, especially in the wake of loss. For while The High Mountains of Portugal is an exuberantly narrative novel, it is even more so a contemplative, philosophical one.

The High Mountains of Portugal: A Novel - AbeBooks The High Mountains of Portugal: A Novel - AbeBooks

A trio of men who have each suffered great losses set out on individual quests to heal their broken hearts – journeys that come together in unexpected ways. This slapstick comedy, which, frankly, runs on too long, is punctuated by the grim nature of Tomás's quest. I know contextually this would be an alien contraption to most people back then (1904) but do today’s audience need to suffer - and you will SUFFER - page after page of mind-numbingly tedious descriptions of how a car operates?It's about grief and love and faith, and they're all kind of on a quest, but not after anything really important! The theme of the animal, the relation of human and animal, has come to predominate, and on this subject Martel is an original, strange and subtle thinker. It is forbidden to copy anything for publication elsewhere without written permission from the copyright holder. When Peter Tovy’s life is finally knitted into the two previous stories, “The High Mountains of Portugal” attains an altitude from which we can see something quietly miraculous. While Odo has mastered the simple human trick of making porridge, Peter has learned the difficult animal skill of doing nothing.