James Scudamore
In the opening scene of James Scudamore's second novel, Heliopolis, the anti-hero Ludo - né Ludwig Aparecido dos Santo - slinks around his adoptive sister Melissa's apartment as their father, Zé Generoso, descends in a helicopter. Ludo is used to this routine deception; he leisurely squeezes orange juice, writes cryptic messages in the fog of the bathroom mirror and leaves his pubic hairs in his sister's bed for his brother-in-law, Ernesto, to find.
Then, without much thought, Ludo heads off into the throbbing and violent city of Heliopolis to his soul-sucking job writing copy for his father's monolithic grocery-store company, MaxiMarket. It's a gripping, nearly futuristic first scene, full of possibility and stealth, with a built-in incest hook.
Obsessed with his adoptive sister, and with a penchant for blow, booze and rich food, Ludo is disaster of a human being, both inside and out; his skin is "pitted and flawed like tired fruit" and he is cadaverously thin because of a hyperactive metabolism.
Hung over and depressed, Ludo takes a detour on his way to work and ends up in a favela, a makeshift ghetto in the fictional city featured in the novel, a city that bears a striking resemblance to Sao Paulo, Brazil. Ludo ends up in a conflict with a young man named Milton, who ends up getting shot by a security guard.
As a result, Ludo, or at least part of his consciousness, returns to the shantytown to review how and why he has reached such depths of depravity: "My life is a maze with ever-narrowing paths. It's only a matter of time before the walls hem me in so completely that I won't be able to move at all."
Through flashbacks scenes, we learn that Ludo and his mother were figuratively airlifted out of their own ghetto after Rebecca Generoso, Zé's wife, in one of her many acts of charity, hired Ludo's mother as the cook at the Generosos' farm estate. Ludo enjoys his life in the kitchen as the son of a servant and quickly inherits his mother cooking skills. He falls for the young Melissa as the two troll the forests of the immense estate like fierce, curious animals. Melissa and Ludo inhabit a world of their own, as close children do, but must redefine their relationship when Ludo is formally adopted by the Generosos.
As Ludo fecklessly tries to undo the damage he has inflicted on Milton and his sister's marriage, his stable (if odd), bucolic childhood is contrasted with the grittiness of his urban present. Similarly, Scudamore juxtaposes the smooth veneer of wealth with the viscera of poverty, and places Ludo precisely in the middle of these contrasts.
Within these two stories, Scudamore also weaves a third story of the MaxiMarket's hapless corporate culture as the company prepares its campaign for MaxiBudget: a store that offers cheaper groceries to shantytown residents. Scudamore's moral imperative is a bit ham-fisted: Consumer culture and its efforts to both patronize and exploit the poor are evil and manipulative! We get it.
Food is vital, both structurally and stylistically, to this novel; Ludo's intense relationship with food is one of his only defining characteristics, besides treachery, so Scudamore uses the clever trick of naming chapters after such foods as Avocado Milkshakes and Club Sandwiches to indicate both plot points and their intrinsic importance to Ludo's emotional makeup. Descriptions of food can be beautifully pornographic at times: "A dish of three sea urchins, accompanied by carefully sculpted shards of daikon … the spiky blue-black shells in which they are served perfect miniature bird's nests. The gloopy yellow pods inside quiver as they are set down - jellied gold." At times, however, the descriptions become indulgent.
Despite the occasional lapse into foodie overkill, the perfect pacing of the book keeps the reader engaged. Yet somehow the different plot paths, from the past to the present, do not culminate in an ending, the MaxiBudget launch party, that is entirely satisfying. This letdown is partly because Ludo, despite his culinary skills, is detached and scattered, and the motivation for his actions throughout the novel is unclear.
Although the aim of the novel - to revise the rags-to-riches narrative in a South American context - is ambitious, the author tries to encompass too many themes and narrative threads without a strong central character to ground the reader and the story. Like a soup with too many herbs but a watery stock, Heliopolis is busy with flavour but lacks a substantial base.
Ibi Kaslik is the author of Skinny and The Angel Riots. She has never eaten sea urchin.