Country: U.K
Genre: Crime Fiction
Pages: 250 kb (eOriginal)
Order COPACABANA here
All this strangeness would pass. One day he would sit at this bar, knowing the waiter's name, sharing a joke with him just like Pete might do. John knew that he had to show himself willing to spend time on his own. He did not want to be a total burden on his friend. Not even all that money could excuse such a state of dependence. Nobody liked a clingy mate.
One of the eBook's biggest perk is its lack of standardization of format. Writers can put out fiction of any kind of length out there, therefore making it attractive for readers to try new things. You won't be afraid to tryout new writers if they don't ask for a major commitment. That's how I stumbled upon Jack Rylance and his brand new series of tropical crime thrillers. Rylance launched his new baby COPACABANA last June to kick things off. It's billed at a novel, but really is more of a novella, checking at just over 120 pages long. My expectations for a novella about British expatriates in Brazil weren't very high. I wanted deadbeats on the beach and a lot of mayhem. They were only partially met as COPACABANA has good moments, but was weighted down by several minor issues that ended up taking their toll on the final product.
For Pete Murphy, life in Copacabana is as good as he can ask for.He has fun, he found love and he is as far away from Liverpool as possible. He gets a mouthful of Union Jack though when John Mullan drops by from the old country with 200 000 Euros worth of hot money. That unexpected drop-off drags a little darkness back to the surface for Pete and a quiet tension settles between the two. They have a history together as Pete dated John's mother a long while ago and left a profound impression on a young John. All this baggage is hard to handle for Pete, as he starts learning the truth about John's hit. Turns out it's not just free money, like the youngster first claimed it to be. It's as far as it gets from that. The life Pete Murphy tried to leave is coming back to him.
I wanted to love COPACABANA more than I actually did. Expatriate gangster stories can be both fascinating by their locales and by their estranged characters, all torn up about the life they used to live. Jack Rylance's novella is colorful enough, but yet suffers from a pacing issue. You never really feel Pete and John are in real danger. There is no life-or-death tension until very, very (too) late in the story. Even when plot elements are unfolded, the characters continue to wander around and do their daily activities and there's too much happening between Pete and John learning about what damnation the money will bring and the actual damnation. The short size of COPACABANA plays against it. It's paced like a long, maybe three hundred pages novel and yet doesn't have the space to support it. The fun about reading a hundred page long story is that everything moves fast. It's not the case here.
The bar they had chosen to meet in was the type of place Pete hated: the brutal dance music pumping out of the speakers, the scrum at the bar, the scrabble for drunkenness. It was downmarket and cheesy, part of a world he had distanced himself from.
There are upsides to COPACABANA, notably the gorgeous, byzantine setting. I had this exhilarating sensation you often get when traveling and have everything to discover about a place, while reading Rylance's book. It means that he both knows the locale very well and hit some of the right notes with characterization. I had my issues with Pete and John as characters, but I found ways to relate. The two protagonists are longing for a better life. Aside from the money issue, they had problems I could relate too, which was nice. I thought I'd mention it, because some readers are very ticklish about that, it's a TAD overwritten. Nothing alarming, but at times, Rylance's qualifiers will make you wince. He never puts too much of them, but sometimes, they're just too strong for what the situation calls for. Overall, I thought COPACABANA had a lot of potential, but it felt very raw. Not quite ready to hit the road.
TWO STARS