PanNewcity LitTraveling in the shadow of his sister Lígia’s suicide, Oséias’ return home is meant to be a portrait of how the bonds of a family are destroyed by collective grief. But, ultimately the book fails even to tease the possibility of closure, proving itself to be a tragically claustrophobic portrait of a single man’s regret. Ruffato’s prose is relentless to the point of exhaustion. He rarely uses section or paragraph breaks, turning Oséias’ narrative into a singular stream of memories, experiences and judgments about the world that never have enough time to truly settle into the story ... The only possible question that could drive Oséias’ story is whether or not closure is possible, if his tortuous journey would somehow be worth it in the end. But the novel answers these questions before they’re allowed to be asked. What readers are left with is a story too suffocated by Oséias’ inner monologue at the expense of exposition. When the stories of his past are revealed, they’re shadowed by an all-consuming remorse ... There’s something to be said about the possibilities of fiction depicting narrators in a perpetual stasis. Where “Late Summer” fails is within its refusal to use Oséias’ condition as a foundation to extract tension from the world he traverses. Unlike, say, the narrator of Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Oséias’ isolation is never meant to drive him toward any version of a catharsis, nor does it reveal the culture that fostered his hopelessness. Oséias’ fate is sealed before the first sentence.
