SOMEPLACE (ALGUM LUGAR) BY PALOMA VIDAL: DISPLACEMENT, STRANGENESS AND MELANCHOLY

Abstract

In the Brazilian contemporary novel, especially since the 1990s, movements and spatial changes of characters who, temporarily in other countries and cultures, face loneliness, estrangement and the search for themselves, are recurring. Taking this into account, the novel Someplace (Algum Lugar) by Paloma Vidal has been analyzed. The protagonist and her companion move from Rio de Janeiro to fulfil a research internship in Los Angeles. The American city, symbolized by large avenues, the lack people, and the supremacy of the automobile, portrays a hostile image, similar to the “nonplace”, characterized by Marc Augé. The city is the portrait of a world that has become hostile to human conviviality; the confi guration of the city suppresses the possibility of any encounter, a fact that tears the individual apart. Increasingly alone, exiled from herself, the protagonist is divided between the dream and the devouring reality and inhabited by an indefinite absence, an existential void.