Capão Pecado - Ferréz

After reading City of God and Child of the Dark, I decided to keep reading books about the Brazilian outskirts. This time I picked Capão Pecado by Ferréz.

This is a very easy book to read. The language is simple and direct. It feels like someone is sitting next to you telling the story. It doesn’t try to impress you with difficult words, and I think that’s one of the biggest strengths of the book.

The story follows Rael, but along the way we meet many other people from the neighborhood. It’s a heavy book, talking about violence, poverty, betrayal and drugs, but it never tries to romanticize any of it. It just shows the reality that many people live every day.

What I liked the most was exactly this feeling of authenticity. You can tell the author really knows that world. It doesn’t feel like someone writing about the outskirts. It feels like someone writing from the outskirts.

At the same time, I felt that some important topics move too fast. Sometimes I wanted the author to spend more time developing a few characters and situations. The story moves at a fast pace, almost like movie scenes changing quickly. That makes the book very engaging, but it also makes some moments lose a bit of their impact.

Even with that, I think it’s a book that is really worth reading. It’s simple without being shallow, and honest without trying to shock the reader. I’m also curious to read more books by Ferréz after this one.