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The Village of Pointless Conversation
It doesn't matter where you go, I tell them. 'Travelling just means getting out of where you were.' Which is my halfassed way of saying, if they have stumbled through my doorway, they are lost as hell. Off the guidebook grid. Bumfuck nowhere, in other words. Pocolim is a little village somewhere or nowhere in Goa. It is home to Ferdie, the postman, who sets out to find his longlost love, Millie. Along for the ride in a recently repaired vintage car are the most unlikely companions: his friend Angie, the sweet, virginal widow, her motherinlaw, the extraordinarily corpulent and bossy Rosalina Eucharistica, renowned painter Don Pedro who finds lost inspiration in the vastness of Rosalina's body, and Savio, friend of Angie's late husband and once contender for her love. On the road, resentments, ambitions, bitterness and desires come to a boil, as disturbing secrets tumble out, redemption strikes where they least expect it. The Village of Pointless Conversation is a sensuous, funny, fullbodied affair, shot through with quiet gloom that peels off the thin skin of pretence under which lie all our human absurdities.