A Small Death in Lisbon

⚖The case for it

Wilson runs two books at once, wartime Lisbon and a murder in the late nineties, and ends chapters on cliffhangers in both before you can see how they touch. Zé Coelho is the reason the modern half works, weary and self-deprecating, and his relationship with his teenage daughter carries more than the case does. Neutral Portugal thick with spies and refugees and the tungsten the Nazis needed is the atmosphere, and the wartime villains stay uncomfortably alive rather than cardboard. Readers call it “a gritty, dark historical novel” and “one of the best books you’ve never read.”

— the honest librarian

✕The case against

The wartime strand runs to roughly two hundred pages and reads to many as more history than the novel needs, with the book stronger at two thirds the length: “it’s a big chunky book,” and readers stall there “looking for a reason to continue reading.” The link between eras is reached by coincidence rather than earned. A Portuguese reader says Wilson gets the food and the streets right and the institutions “very unconvincing, not to say plain wrong.” The sexual-crime material across both timelines is a lot to sit through.

— the honest librarian

8h

honest hours

11

sittings