Heliopolis

Set in modern-day Sao Paulo, Brazil, Heliopolis is the story of Ludo Dos Santos, the son of a woman who serves as a cook to a wealthy family, the Carnicellis. The Carnicellis own a farm which they use for weekend getaways and other family functions, as well as business dealings. It is there that Ludo lives. He was actually born into a 'favela' (a kind of shantytown area for squatters in the city)with no father at hand, Ludo and his mother became the pet project of Rebecca Carnicelli, who's out t [...]

Semi-exotic setting doesn't quite do enough to make this thoroughly generic work of literary fiction stand out from the crowd. Our protagonist is disaffected and self-obsessed; has lots of money, though came from poverty, and is angsty about the tension; oh, and he's engaged in a semi-incestuous affair with his adoptive sister. He generally behaves like an asshole, is consumed by self-loathing, and tries desperately to forge authentic human connections to some idealized, salt-of-the-earth, chara [...]

An entertaining contemporary rags-to-riches story set in the great city of Sao Paulo, rich in its depictions of various places, lifestyles and its people.In theory, it sounds like it could be a dull concept; but in reality, it's a fast-paced, comic and engaging read, jumping from childhood memories in the midst of the super rich, to the office marketing affairs of adulthood and the unsettling dangers as a stranger in the slums.However, on a personal note, I wouldn't recommend anyone reading this [...]

Awesome quote from the book: "There will be a last encounter with a treasured friend. A last swallow of your favorite food. A last loss from the love of your life. Most of the time you won't know when it's the last time."

I lived in Helipolis many years ago. I am curious of how it is portrayed in this story.

The setting for this novel is 21st century São Paulo, a dual city defined by its massive skyscrapers and squalid favelas (shanty towns), personal helicopters overhead and horribly congested roads below, wealthy white and poor (mostly) black citizens, and its tightly packed center city surrounded by heavily guarded neighborhoods with European styled mansions and heliports for the country's elite.Ludo is a boy who was born to a single mother in a favela, where the only opportunities available to [...]

HOLY CRAP GOOD. It's got the airtight plot of Great Expectations, the modern edginess of House of Leaves with none of the camp. Anthony Bourdain could've done the food writing. Some of my favorite paragraphs I've ever read, I think.

Slumdog Millionnaire goes Brasilian :)Rich people moving between helipads only and hundreds of thousands of people in slums - the set is Sao Paulo. Haunting images, touching characters, and a plot worthy of the best telenovella.

What's good about this book:The vivid depiction of the chaotic, polluted, violent, dystopian, unequal megalopolis that is São Paulo. A lot of the narration is well-written, the sentences have a nice rhythm, there are some nice images, the text is best when describing nature, the weather, food - and it does the latter very well. The relationship between the protagonist Ludo and his mother felt real. It seemed that there was mutual love and respect there and that his mother felt well-drawn and be [...]

Very interesting book. However, when you think about it, nothing really happens! It is just a story of a person who has had a really difficult childhood, and got extremely lucky to find a place in the bright world of Brazil. I got somewhat satisfaction at the end of the book, however, it is very weird to describe the feeling, as the book as pretty "plain". Although, after reading the book, I have got some insight into the world of Favelas, and the poor life of Brazil, that I have never imagined [...]

not exactly a classic but a great way to learn about the favelas and the neoliberal ploys by brazilian capitalists. Very engaging

No time to actually say what I think except this was truly one of the most goddamn heartbreakingly good books I've ever read.

"Heliopolis" centers around, Ludo dos Santos, a well-to-do young "paulistino" who started out life in a favela. His single mother, however, becomes a chef at a weekend retreat for a wealthy family and later they adopt him. Moving into their gated community in Sao Paulo, he finds his place in their world but to make matters more complicated, he becomes obsessed with his adopted sister--who eventually becomes his best friend's wife.This is a smart and darkly humorous novel that flips back and fort [...]

"My full name is Ludwig Aparecido dos Santos. People assume my mother was a music lover, but I’m told that ‘Ludwig’ was a bar in the city years ago, whose name was written above the door in a curly silver script that pleased her. As for the rest, the name ‘Aparecido’ refers to my mother’s sometime contention that instead of having a real father I ‘slipped down a rainbow’, while ‘dos Santos’ was the name given to orphans during the infancy of the country, because they were dee [...]

One of the quotes on the back of James Scudamore's Heliopolis compares it to Great Expectations, which is usually a good reason to go back and actually read Great Expectations instead of the particular book in question.Heliopolis didn't just fall short of Great Expectations, it also fell short of the rave review in the Washington Post that drew me to it in the first place.The novel is reasonably good but doesn't come close to great and can be flawed and clunky at times. It is a black comedy ting [...]

In my mind, Heliopolis is a mixture of a number of other books. First of all, it reminds me of The White Tiger in that it's the story of a boy who is born into abject poverty but, by unbelievable luck, he escapes his destiny and rises high. Then it also reminds me of Like Water for Chocolate - it's full of food and magic, and food infused with magic. And it also resembles Bright Lights, Big City in the sense that it's a melancholy-uplifting tale of being in your twenties, and being lost.If you p [...]

I have always enjoyed the books published by Europa Editions so when I saw this book for sale at my college's bookstore I had to buy. I was drawn into the story by the first line and this book kept me interested right until the very end. Set in Sao Paulo in the present day, Heliopolis is told from the perspective of Ludo, a young man who escaped poverty and now works for a major cooperation. Those who are high up in society ride exclusively in helicopters and do not interact with the poor or tho [...]

Järjekordne suurepärane leid. Valisin raamatukogust eelkõige kaanekujunduse pärast. Raamat räägib natuke vaesusest ja rikkusest, klassidest ja nahavärvist. Kuidas ühiskonna erinevad kihid on üksteisest kõrge müüriga eraldatud nii vaimselt kui füüsiliselt. Ja kuidas see on neid paranoiliseks muutnud. "Omade" ja "võõraste" suhtes. Aga eelkõige on see ühe mehe iseenda äratamise lugu.Siin on päris hea kokkuvõte raamatust. kevinfromcanada.word kuigi ma kõigega päris ei nõustuk [...]

Born in a favela in Sao Paulo, Brazil, our hero Ludwig Aparecido dos Santos, known as Ludo, is rescued from poverty by a corporate giant and raised in a gated community where the rich travel to and from their destinations via helicopter. Heliopolis is the story of Ludo coming to terms with this lifestyle and of an errant romance. Scudamore draws us with his first line. "It's early, not yet seven A.M and once again I'm waking up beside my adoptive sister." The author is very skilled at first pers [...]

Not much to say about this one -- it was a sadly generic book all around. This had the potential to really show readers about the class structure of São Paulo, and really get into the craziness that is Brazil, but instead we got a soap opera about some unlikable rich people trying to really "understand" the lower class. Way too much of the book is spent whining about the lives of completely uninteresting people. The only times we were allowed a look into what the author claims to be the "real" [...]

This should probably be 4 stars. Set in Sao Paulo, Brasil, it shows the incredibly opposite worlds of the rich and poor cultures of the city. Scudamore writes beautifully and realistically (I think) about Brasil. However, I felt a bit uncomfortable laughing at times because the issues are really too serious to laugh at. I am interested in an evaluation of a reader who has been in Brasil more recently than I. The characters were interesting, especially the main character, but something seemed lac [...]

An interesting tale of what happens after the "ever after" part of the story when the orphan is rescued from the ghetto and raised by the rich, kind family. My problem with the book is that I get the feeling that the author has never actually visited a ghetto, or for that matter, met any poor, uneducated people. Every character in the book, including the ones who are supposedly uneducated or gang bangers, speaks the Queen's English. There is something weird about long conversations with gangster [...]

I found this an odd book, part Great Expectations, part Like Water for Chocolate but somehow it works. I really enjoyed reading about Ludo's rags-to-riches life while never really liking Ludo or finding him particularly compelling. Maybe that's the point, he had no agency in his own life just a great deal of good fortune, but that was enough for me. Then Scudamore got tired/ bored /lost confidence and threw in some action/brutality and I got a bit bored because it wasn't really needed. The Big S [...]

Oh my. It took a while for me to get into Heliopolis, but after I did I found it to be a fascinating read. The main character Ludo was very interesting, and I don't think I've ever read a story with the same background as his- the incestuous and obsessive love he has for Melissa is tackled head-on, and I found the ending to resolve this issue (and the others) to be more than satisfactory.I recommend this, there are a few plot twists in this that you might enjoy, and the main character is very li [...]

This is not my usual type of reading but I enjoyed the book. I particularly liked its structure with memory and present intertwined and I loved the food headings of some sections which were in keeping with a cook's son. Some reviews have questioned the book's authenticity but I don't agree. I didn't see the city as San Paulo but as a mythical city and at first I thought that the city could be in the future. It is Scudamore's city and every writer creates an individual setting wich is their own. [...]

Feels a bit like a modern version of "Great Expectations" set in Brazil. The book held my interest just enough to not give up on it, but that's about it. I considered quitting and moving on from it multiple times, but Scudamore does have a knack for creating cliffhangers at the end of most chapters and he's good at using language to create some very evocative imagery. He also does do a good job creating an ambiguous narrator who I found my self at times (well most of the time) loathing and at ot [...]

This novel is The White Tiger meets Wuthering Heights and settles down in Sao Paulo. It explores the life of Ludo, a twenty-something who was plucked from the slums as a baby and delivered into the hands of Sao Paulo's business elite, to spend his childhood sipping poolside drinks at their luxurious rural farmhouse and traipsing through the lush forests with his adoptive sister. As he grows up, his identity becomes more and more of a central conflict as he goes to work for an oily businessman an [...]

Less a full-fledged novel than a Brazil cliche delivery vehicle. This is one of those novels that would have been better as a long essay about the gaps between wealthy and poor in semi-contemporary São Paulo. As a novel, it relies on absolutely improbable connections between characters, and on those characters occasionally acting in ways that no rational human would in order to advance the plot. The revelation at the end maybe a bit less exciting than the author intended. And in its way a very [...]

I would love to give this book 4.5 stars - it was really fantastic. A fun, smart look into Sao Paolo and its class division with a snarky but lovable narrator. I especially liked the commentary on the advertising industry as it was right on (the corporate culture, lingo, etc.). The only reason it doesn't get five stars is that the language is used more as a conveyor of plot (which is fantastic) than an interest unto its own. This is by no means saying that it is poorly written - it's wonderfully [...]

I found this book really engrossing. Ludo is such a unique character, and I couldn't get his story or the city out of my head. The story is very subtle—the author doesn't try to hit you over the head. Scudamore keeps to the essentials and doesn't play things up for shock value. There's always a bit of light in the dark moments. While some might find the writing occasionally flat, I felt that the tone worked really well with Ludo's sense of detachment. I would definitely recommend this book, an [...]