Not to Fall on Ice

The novel explores the life of an individual as she moves from her immediate family culture in Brazil and then across the world to the UK, America, and finally settling in the UK. It is an exploration of changes of a person over cultures, places and over time. It is a distinctive story. The book is both very focused on an individual’s life, but also notes contexts and is written at the intersection of these two dimensions. I must admit I was suspicious of the novel at first, given it is written by someone who has normally written sociological texts, but it does in fact explore the drama of an individual, the uniqueness of someone’s life and does this via vivid fiction. Many complex and strong emotions are explored, particularly on love, on conflict, connection and disconnection with family. The book grips one’s attention with its strong narrative flow.

A gem of a book. I should first declare an interest – I know the author, so initially I was simply curious to know about her life through the story of Isabel. But what a life – from youthful love affairs in Brazil and crossing paths with the secret police to an early encounter with Lula, Brazil’s future president, the early chapters offer a fascinating insight into Brazilian middle class life under a dictatorship. That sense of precarity – not to fall on ice – follows Isabel as she moves first to America, then the UK, pursuing her academic career. As an ambitious scholar, she is always reminded of her status as a foreigner and a woman. She suffers, there is grief and betrayal and bitter family rows, all relayed with unflinching honesty. Yet there is also dancing, love, friendship. Isabel is an engaging heroine, resilient, passionate, painstakingly building a good life out of hard times. As a fellow academic I of course identified with the slings and arrows of university life, but also enjoyed a more universal tale – what does it feel like to be an outsider, fighting against the odds, chasing the success that drops so easily into the laps of others, trying to reconcile family, love and professional ambition? I’d recommend this as a colourful, vibrant read, rich in history and personal insight, a story of hope resurgent. Which, let’s face it, is something we could all use right now.

Not to Fall on Ice is a multi-layered novel that traces the life of Isabel Mendes, a girl from a conventional Brazilian family who grows up to be an academic living among intellectuals, artists and political activists in Europe and the United States. Along the way, the book explores Isabel’s relationships with her mother and siblings; her developing sexuality; her political activism under Brazil’s dictatorship (there is a hair-raising run in with the secret police); her experience of motherhood and marriage; and her struggles as a female academic doubly marginalised by her gender and her status as a cultural ‘outsider’. It is a rich and compelling read and highly recommended.

This is a beautiful book by a talented writer. Not to Fall on Ice is to be praised from the writing to the poetry, to the artwork. I loved the historical anecdotes, and more so the artistic references. We visited Van Gogh’s The Potato Eaters in Amsterdam at the time of reading this, remembering the story, the powerful imagery. Also, the small, detailed memories recounted are superb. I am in the throes of breastfeeding now, and I gasped at the breastfeeding anecdote in Isabel’s account. It touched a nerve as I am feeding literally everywhere! I’d like to believe times have changed, that the unkind experience narrated no longer has a place. Elizabeth Silva writes at length about the complex feelings of motherhood and societal pressures, among the themes of ‘clubability’, the belongings of social class, race, gender and place. While the writing style encouraged me in a fast paced read, a lot of the narrative has stayed with me, and I keep thinking, learning from what is told in this book.

This is a remarkable book, which has the intimate appeal of memoir and the narrative energy of a good novel. It is the story of one woman's life as she has lived it across cultures and languages, revolving between her birthplace of Brazil and her adult life in America and Europe, while valiantly keeping her footing on those slippery surfaces. It is the story of a clever woman's ambitions fulfilled, but also the story of estrangement, always lived in a mesh of possibilities, a superb example of transcultural life-writing.