But Vasconcelos’s genius is his ability to find salvation in the smallest corners. Zezé teaches us that a child’s pain is immense, but so is a child’s capacity for magic. He transforms a skinny, neglected sweet orange tree in his backyard into a friend, a confidant, a living being he calls Minguinho . The tree listens. The tree does not hit him. The tree is the first piece of the universe that belongs only to him.
In the vast landscape of Brazilian literature, there are books that tell stories, and then there are books that draw blood. José Mauro de Vasconcelos’s Mi planta de naranja lima is the latter. Published in 1968, it is not merely a children’s book, nor strictly an adult novel; it is a razor blade wrapped in the memory of childhood. Vasconcelos Jose Mauro - Mi planta de naranja lima
The tragedy of Mi planta de naranja lima is not that Zezé suffers, but that he learns to love so deeply that the inevitable loss shatters the very framework of his childhood. When the real world—in the form of an accident and a train—crashes into his fantasy, Vasconcelos performs a brutal literary surgery. He cuts out the child’s innocence and leaves the adult’s memory. But Vasconcelos’s genius is his ability to find