The Messenger and Other Stories with Angels/O Mensageiro e Outras Histórias com Anjos
Love, death, revelation: extreme situations crossed by angelic figures. Three stories of the supernatural? No, or at least not necessarily. What dazzles us (or disturbs us) in these stories is perhaps simply the discovery of the human being.
Teolinda Gersão’s work has twice been awarded the Fiction Prize of the P.E.N. Club (1981 and 1989), as well as the Grand Prize for Novel and Novella of the Portuguese Writers’ Association (1995), the Critics’ Prize of the International Association of Literary Critics (1999), the Fernando Namora Prize (1999), and the Camilo Castelo Branco Grand Prize for the Short Story (A.P.E./Municipality of Vila Nova de Famalicão, 2003).
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More than speaking of concrete angels and their celestial radiance, T.G. tells us about what is immaterial in human existence. It is this vague glow around the characters that interests her, a secret wisdom that suddenly appears like a revelation. Just look at the emotional labyrinth of the last story, and the way the secret of the adulterous mother – tempted by a worldly Seraphim – ends up restoring the family order, “as if a stronger light had been switched on.”
JOSÉ MÁRIO SILVA, DIÁRIO DE NOTÍCIAS
This book is so brief that, if one were to summarise it, everything would be said – everything except the incredible poetry, the incredible language of Teolinda Gersão. We hear the voice of a little girl, Ilda, whose mother slips into a kind of undefined madness. Whose father drinks too much. Whose ailing grandfather tells the story of his village swallowed by water. Ilda hears voices that haunt her. This little book is a great novel. Long after closing it, one still hears Ilda’s voice; one would like to take her in one’s arms and listen to her again. That is the mark of masterpieces.
CHRISTOPHE TISON, COSMOPOLITAN
Les Anges presents itself as a vivid, tenacious interior narrative, marked by a brevity that in no way diminishes its intensity; (…) the condensed nature of the text, the touching naïveté of the narrator, that small voice that seems to rise from the depths of her being – all this prompts us to place this story among the books that matter.
B. LONGRE, SITARTMAGAZINE
In this short text by Teolinda Gersão, brief yet of rare poetic density, there is no pathos. A thin, quiet voice simply expresses the world around it. The story has the whiteness of dawn – a whiteness made of long silences, of those moments when angels pass.
SEAN JAMES ROSE, LIRE
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O Mensageiro e Outras Histórias com Anjos O Amor, a morte, a revelação: situações limite, que figuras de anjos atravessam. Três histórias do sobrenatural? Não, ou pelo menos não necessariamente. O que nestas histórias nos deslumbra (ou nos perturba) é porventura apenas a descoberta do ser humano. À obra de Teolinda Gersão foi atribuído por duas vezes o Prémio de Ficção do P. E. N. Clube (1981 e 1989), o Grande Prémio de Romance e Novela da Associação Portuguesa de Escritores (1995), o Prémio da Critica da Associação Internacional de Críticos Literários (1999), o Prémio Fernando Namora (1999) e o Grande Prémio de Conto Camilo Castelo Branco A.P.E./C.M de Vila Nova de Famalicão (2003).