Deixa Rolar

Deixa rolar. Two words every Brazilian says a dozen times a day. Let it roll. Relax. It will sort itself out. The narrator of this novel heard them all his life from the one man in the room who could least afford them: an uncle born with a body that would not obey, who drank through a straw, ran the best open house in the old city from a sheepskin on the floor, and never once used his right to be bitter.The nephew went the other way. A swimmer from a family that spoke in water, he sank a relay at nine in his mother's own pool and promised himself it would never happen again. It never did. The promise carried him to two Olympic Games, a national record, a shoulder that came apart in the air one January morning, and a second life in engineering on a cold island where, in his forties, his body began sending reports from places that did not exist.Deixa Rolar is the story of a phrase, and of the forty years it took to hear it. It is about a house with a door that never locked, a machine built for a man who could not sit still, a table that seats twelve when the chairs migrate, and the difference between controlling a life and living one.