conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is a description for a book titled Alentejo Blue about with the genre: Literature & Fiction, Contemporary?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: the author has an astonishing ability to portray vastly different characters and to make them sympathetic. This is a writer of immense talent and humanity with an agile wit that makes reading her work a complete pleasure.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is a description for a book titled Alentejo Blue about Brick, Lane, Booker with the genre: Literature & Fiction, World Literature?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: With the 2003 publication of her acclaimed debut novel, <a href="/exec/obidos/ASIN/0743243315/${0}"> Brick Lane </a> in 2003, which was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize, the author established herself as a keen observer of the human condition, in all its ordinariness and its follies. The setting was England, pre-and post-9/11, in an apartment house occupied mostly by Bangladeshi immigrants. In Alentejo Blue , the setting is a village community in Portugal, called Mamarossa. Once again, the author has turned her unerring eye on the inner landscape of her characters. In a series of episodic vignettes, she limns the daily lives, hopes, wishes, and dreams of villagers and visitors alike. Her special gift is capturing the small detail that shows the person: the filthy rag that Vasco mindlessly uses to wipe the tables in his cafe as he muses about his dead American wife and what he will eat next; the smelly never-washed clothes that drunken China Potts appears in again and again. She doesn't shrink from the disgusting or the gross, but her revelations are never gratuitous. This is information the reader needs.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is the first five paragraphs for this book?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Alentejo Blue
  Stanton lay back on the bed. He looked at his toenails, ingrained with dirt, the right big toenail chipped and peeling away at the corner, the nail on the little toe black though he did not remember banging it. He lay there gazing at his feet until darkness took them and the cicadas made audible his thoughts: insistent, streaming, unintelligible.
  He had taken the truck to the garage to get the clutch looked at. When he got back Chrissie was waiting for him.
  She had her arms wrapped around her chest, her hip bones were a pair of razor shells and her pubic hair was surprisingly dark. 'I thought we should. At least once. You know, with our clothes off.'
  She turned on her stomach and spoke into the pillow so he could not catch the words. He ran his palm down the ridge of her spine and on to the shallow slope of her buttocks. She put her arms behind her back, wrists together. There was a spot of blood on the sheets from her forearm. 'Turn over,' he said.
  She obeyed him but when he looked into her face there was nothing he could read except a kind of helpless defiance. He had seen once a picture of a protesting nun in a distant country who wore a similar expression as the flames licked up her robes.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is five more paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Paula slid off the cash desk. She straightened her skirt and turned out a toe. 'Mmm,' she said. 'Yeah. I thought I saw it in her face. Her stomach's not showing, but you can read a lot from a face.'
  Teresa nodded; she tried to smile but it made her gag and she covered her mouth with her hands. If Francisco didn't finish school she would kill him. Mãe would go out of her mind.
  A couple of miles outside Mamarrosa, on the road to Ourique where the ochre fields rose and fell gentle as a lullaby, Teresa slowed the scooter as the man stepped out of the low cistus hedge. He held a long stick to which he had tied a red cloth and when he raised it she stopped. The cows pushed into each other at the roadside, heads resting on bony backs. She watched the stragglers; the lazy march across the dormant land, the little circus of dust at their hooves. They were cream and fawn and brown and glorious in the rich evening light. The man shouted and waved his stick and they began to cross the road.
  Teresa turned off the engine. She observed without even trying the particular way that they walked. Heads high, ears twitched, the legs that looked set to buckle, the joints that rolled deep in their shoulders in that loose, dislocated way. In London, she thought, it would finally be fruitful, this gift or this burden she had.
  She set off again with her skirt whipping fancifully at her thighs. London would be big, dark and dirty. She knew it wasn't the place that she let herself dream. Whatever it was, she was ready for it. If she could she would drive there right now.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the first sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: She straightened her skirt and turned out a toe. 'Mmm,' she said. 'Yeah. I thought I saw it in her face. Her stomach's not showing, but you can read a lot from a face.'
  Teresa nodded; she tried to smile but it made her gag and she covered her mouth with her hands. If Francisco didn't finish school she would kill him. Mãe would go out of her mind.
  A couple of miles outside Mamarrosa, on the road to Ourique where the ochre fields rose and fell gentle as a lullaby, Teresa slowed the scooter as the man stepped out of the low cistus hedge. He held a long stick to which he had tied a red cloth and when he raised it she stopped. The cows pushed into each other at the roadside, heads resting on bony backs. She watched the stragglers; the lazy march across the dormant land, the little circus of dust at their hooves. They were cream and fawn and brown and glorious in the rich evening light. The man shouted and waved his stick and they began to cross the road.
  Teresa turned off the engine. She observed without even trying the particular way that they walked. Heads high, ears twitched, the legs that looked set to buckle, the joints that rolled deep in their shoulders in that loose, dislocated way. In London, she thought, it would finally be fruitful, this gift or this burden she had.
  She set off again with her skirt whipping fancifully at her thighs. London would be big, dark and dirty. She knew it wasn't the place that she let herself dream. Whatever it was, she was ready for it. If she could she would drive there right now.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What is the last five paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Potts family sat at their table and watched the chaos erupt. Ruby got up once from her seat but sat down again, shaking her head.
  The next morning Eduardo went to Vasco's and let himself in at the back. He went upstairs and found Vasco sitting up in bed.
  Vasco hurried across and scrutinized the page. He turned it over and turned it back. 'You know, the moment I saw him I said to myself "hippie". And that is what he is.'
  A few people still spoke of Marco Afonso Rodrigues as winter turned into spring, but many more talked of the price of cork, which had fallen yet again. When the topic was not cork it was usually drought, which was widely predicted this year. Vasco pronounced on the state of the world and Bruno readily agreed. And when they were feeling generous they listened to Eduardo aver at length that Marco was an impostor and not Marco Afonso Rodrigues at all.
  João told his pig the story, on a beautiful December day, with the sun shining through the woods and dancing as the leaves danced on the sow's bristling and attentive back.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Swap the first and the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: João told his pig the story, on a beautiful December day, with the sun shining through the woods and dancing as the leaves danced on the sow's bristling and attentive back. Ruby got up once from her seat but sat down again, shaking her head.
  The next morning Eduardo went to Vasco's and let himself in at the back. He went upstairs and found Vasco sitting up in bed.
  Vasco hurried across and scrutinized the page. He turned it over and turned it back. 'You know, the moment I saw him I said to myself "hippie". And that is what he is.'
  A few people still spoke of Marco Afonso Rodrigues as winter turned into spring, but many more talked of the price of cork, which had fallen yet again. When the topic was not cork it was usually drought, which was widely predicted this year. Vasco pronounced on the state of the world and Bruno readily agreed. And when they were feeling generous they listened to Eduardo aver at length that Marco was an impostor and not Marco Afonso Rodrigues at all.The Potts family sat at their table and watched the chaos erupt.