It´s not every day that someone like Mr. Andy Garcia reviews a book. When the book he decides to review is yours, what ever he says about it you celebrate. Before you seat on to figure out it is a good or a bad review, you think “- Well, if it is bad, at least “He” has read my book and took the time to write about it.” But then you find out immediately that what he has written is good, startingly good so you go speechless and you better let him speak for himself:
“Luís Peazê captures what everyone dreams about the sublime feeling of “la Mar” and man's relationship to it. Most importantly on a boat that he built himself out, out his own love for the art of it. A spiritual construction and journey from start to finish.”
Mr. Andy Garcia - acclaimed actor and director (Los Angeles), May 2019.
Now, after twenty years since you published the first edition of your book (2000) you still receiving good reviews from readers, unknown readers who become your acquaintance, and from well-known readers like The acclaimed writer Moacir C. Lopes (in memoriam), author of among masterpieces, “The Oyster and the Wind” and now this review almost simultaneously with the one above from Mr. Andy Garcia: from a family member of the Hemingway´s Tribe, Mr. Christopher Hemingway; being a librarian himself so twice accredited to say a book is good or not, read out for yourself please and avoid me to brag too much:
“Ernest Hemingway once said ´In order to write about life, first you must live it.´ I had a chance to read this fascinating story. Luís Peazê is the official translator of Ernest Hemingway in Brazil, so it is only fitting that he wrote a story of life on his boat and the ensuing adventures that he experiences. What is truly fascinating is that he built his own boat so in a way his story is ´built with his own hands.´ A must read for any lover of the open seas and anyone wanting to experience their own horizon.”
Christopher Hemingway
I´ll jot this down now, this is a very good occasion to do so: the first solid review I received was in 1998, two years before I published the book. I was in California, Bay Area of San Francisco, preparing myself to fly back to Brazil with the manuscripts under my arms to meet up with a publisher and I received the first review from Cape Cod, by Mr. Alan Clarke, at the time the agent of the Nobel Prize Paulo Coelho. Said him on a long page letter by fax for emails were not so popular by then:
"Among the best Brazilian authors I have ever read. Well written, instigate, inspiring, captures ones attention for sure" Alan Clarke (translator and ex-agent in USA for Paulo Coelho)
I truly feel guilty not to write on all the reviews I´ve received, all good reviews. Why highlight only those above? I hope you understand and bear with me but I must to take the opportunity to thank all those who send me nice emails, encouraging emails to keep writing and more important, emails stating how much my story and the way I tell it on the book impacted them, their own dreams. This is a big deal of responsibility. To finish, I would like to paste up here an extract of the review mentioned above from my good friend Moacir C. Lopes (living up in the sky right now) who had just meet up with me at the Union of Writers in Rio de Janeiro, in the year of 2000 months before the book release that took place in the nice neighborhood of Leblon, a
Casa de Cultura Laura Alvim. Moacir had me at a private corner and gave me lots of tips to go on with my writer´s career than handed me the review:
(...) Peazê is fortunate in being able to write about an abundance of facts and a cast of richly portrayed individuals, without missing the opportunity to create images and poetry. He clearly meets the challenge of presenting us with a unique adventure. The precedent for this sort of tale is Hemingway, who in "The Old Man and the Sea" wrote sparingly, but placed us directly into the puny rowboat, grappling with the giant fish... although fiction. - Was not by accident that Luís Peazê became THE translator of Ernest Hemingway in Brazil; commissioned to translate For Whom The Bell Tolls. Thus, Peazê has created a work of art worthy of the name. "Alvídia, Yet Another Horizon" is both a book and a life's story, sculpted into a single work (...) Moacir C. Lopes (author of The Oyster and The Wind)
I´m so thankful to all the readers, no less no more to each one of them.
Alvidia, Yet Another Horizon It is a different kind of adventure story. It deals with the realization of a dream which became an inner adventure. Luís and Helga, an ordinary Brazilian couple embark on this frenzy trip of partnership which bumped into them out of the blue.
Including a passage sharing a house with Bhagavan Das in Mill Valley, CA, an icon from the beatnik era who inspired Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg and Ram Das among many, Luís unfold a collection of encounters with people, places and circumstances feeding his search and endurance...
A fast paced true story hard to believe these two dreamers had been be able to face with so many odds against them, so many antagonistic events competing to occur almost on the same time. They leave behind a stable ordinary life, he as corporate executive, she was taking her master degree, they are invited to open a factory in the United States, they clash with partners, then go to Australia to open another factory, and once again come back to America at the border of Mexico (Chula Vista) to re-start a third factory, all within four tough years.
... more than anything else, an apprenticeship that: "...sometimes one has to lose in order to win." Yet, the story told by Luis Peazê, is a necessary adventure. "Alvídia" was written between Malaysia, South Africa and Argentina while Luís Peazê was traveling through those countries in 1996.
"I could not stop reading. At times I was nervous, then all of the sudden I had a blast. Amazing inspiring life story" Roberto Barros (reader)
"Helga and Luis proved to me that love does exist" Nani (reader)
"Unique spiral structure of the narrative, which we felt very much lent itself to the adventure (...) gorgeous." Jane Dystel (New York)
Available in paperback and ebook at Amazon - Barnes & Noble and Luís Peazê Shop