Blood Drenched Beard by Daniel Galera is very atmospheric. Our narrator can't remember faces, ever, so needs to identify other qualities of people if he is to recognize them, which he only sometimes does. The woman he loves marries his brother, a writer, while he drifts, teaching swimming and doing triathlons. His parents are divorced and his father is attached only to his dog.
Then his father tells him that he will be committing suicide and asks our narrator to euthanize his dog after. And he tells him that his grandfather, long missing, was murdered in a fishing/vacation village not so far away from their town in Brazil.
And our narrator moves there, with the dog, to find out what happened to the grandfather he never knew. But he's looking for so much more as are the people around him. But the plot isn't the story.
Galera translates as well as writes. He lives in a small vacation and fishing village on the water in Brasil. This book is both a light and enjoyable narrative and a deeper symbolic novel about life. It's absolutely wonderful.
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