The Little Brunette

This summary tells the whole story of A Moreninha, start to finish, because the goal here is not suspense but helping you understand the book from the inside in fifteen minutes. If you still want to read the novel without knowing how it ends, save this summary for later.

A Moreninha, written by Joaquim Manuel de Macedo in 1844, is considered the first big hit of the Brazilian romantic novel, the kind of book that basically taught readers there to enjoy homegrown romance. It mixes a comedy of manners, a childhood mystery and a very specific portrait of Rio de Janeiro's upper class under the Second Reign.

Augusto is a single medical student with a reputation among his friends for being fickle and a bit skeptical about love: he falls for several girls at once and never takes any crush seriously for long.

This stance of the wary heartthrob is the engine that pushes the whole story forward: it is precisely his certainty that he will never be tied down to just one girl that creates the bet that kicks off everything that happens on the island.

Augusto treats his love life with the same detachment he brings to his medical studies: he likes to observe, analyze and draw quick conclusions, and he prefers control to the unpredictability of really falling in love. That overly rational streak is what the book will test from beginning to end.

Filipe, a classmate and close friend, teases Augusto, who brags that he never stays in love with the same girl for long. The two make a bet: if Augusto loves just one girl for fifteen days or more, he loses and has to write a novel telling the story.

The bet looks like a prank between bored students, but it is the thread that stitches the whole book together: every following chapter is, one way or another, about Augusto trying to keep that silly promise and slowly failing, without noticing.

There is a central irony here that only becomes clear at the end: the very novel you are reading is, inside the story, the result of the lost bet, the book the character writes because he could not win.