Invisibles

Invisibles spans two cities by the sea and four decades of music, torture and romance. From the streets of Brighton to the bars of Rio, Ed Siegle weaves the rhythms of Brazil and the troubles of his characters into an absorbing story of identity, love and loss. Joel Burns has always believed his father is still alive. His mother Jackie has long been glad to know Gilberto is dead. When a sighting on a news report from Rio de Janeiro suggests Joel might be right, he travels to Brazil determined to find his long-lost father. Nelson, a down-and-out musician guided by the spirits of Jesus, Yemanjá and his late Aunt Zila, helps Joel retrace his childhood steps – and face up to the contrast between his rosy memories of Gilberto and his mother’s accounts of the man’s cruelty and the violent times following his arrest and imprisonment by the military authorities. At once familiar and foreign, this sweet, sad and compulsively readable first novel by Ed Siegle throngs with visceral memory and unbreakable ordinary heroes.