The Maias

The Maias begins with Afonso da Maia, a patriarch who had already buried too much grief before the novel even opens, and who decides to raise his son Pedro away from public life, surrounded by care and books. Pedro grows up sensitive and falls madly in love with Maria Monforte, a woman surrounded by rumors whom the family does not approve of.

The marriage doesn't last: Maria Monforte abandons Pedro, runs off with a foreign man, and takes the couple's daughter along. Pedro, shattered, takes his own life. It is a short chapter of the book, but a heavy one, and we're warning you up front: if this subject hurts you up close, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline is free, any hour of the day, by calling or texting 988.

The grandson, Carlos da Maia, grows up with his grandfather Afonso, first at the Santa Olávia estate, then at the Ramalhete, the family's house in Lisbon. He becomes a doctor and a bohemian by vocation, alongside his friend João da Ega. One day he meets Maria Eduarda, a seemingly married woman, and falls for her without brakes.

The twist arrives when a loan shark named Guimarães tells Ega, without knowing the weight of what he's saying, that Maria Eduarda is the daughter Maria Monforte took when she fled decades earlier: she is Carlos's sister, daughter of the same father. Carlos finds out the truth, still spends one more night with her, his grandfather dies of grief, and the book closes ten years later with the two friends running after a streetcar nicknamed the Americano.

Afonso is already a man marked by loss when the book starts, and he places in his son Pedro all the hope that was left. The education he plans is strict, full of reading and physical exercise, designed to shape a rational man, able to resist the world without being swept away by feeling.

The problem is that an education well planned on paper doesn't always prepare you for real life. Pedro grows up intelligent but emotionally fragile, unable to handle the first big disappointment, like an employee trained for every situation in the manual who freezes on exactly the exception the manual didn't cover.

After the tragedy with Pedro, Afonso repeats the project with his grandson Carlos, only this time mixing English rigor, which he admires, with an affection that was missing in the first attempt. That mix of discipline and warmth holds up a good part of the book, and it is also what the book questions: can you really shield someone from life itself with nothing but well-planned education?

Pedro falls for Maria Monforte the way we sometimes attach ourselves to someone without thinking about the consequences: fast, completely, holding nothing back. The family distrusts the young woman, but Pedro presses on, convinced that love solves everything.

It doesn't. Maria Monforte, dissatisfied with the confined life the marriage offers, runs off with another man and takes the couple's little daughter. Pedro loses his wife, his daughter, and his own image of himself as someone able to hold his life together, all at once.

Pedro's suicide closes this opening chapter of the book. Eça doesn't detail the method, and this summary won't either: what matters here is the effect on the family left behind, the hole that a loss like this leaves forever. If you or someone close to you is thinking about giving up on life, it's worth calling or texting 988, the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. It's free and works any time.