Alentejo Blue is set in a village community in Portugal, called Mamarossa. In a series of episodic vignettes, Monica Ali lays out the daily lives, hopes, wishes, and dreams of villagers and visitors alike. She captures small details that shows the person: the filthy rag that Vasco mindlessly uses to wipe the tables in his cafe as he muses about his dead American wife and what he will eat next; the smelly never-washed clothes that drunken China Potts appears in again and again. She doesn't shrink from the disgusting or the gross. This book seems disjointed and does not flow. I found it very disappointing compared to her previous work of Brick Lane. Rating: 1 Do NOT recommend
