End

In this deadly-funny debut novel by renowned Brazilian actress Fernanda Torres, five macho friends in Rio's Copacabana reflect on their hedonistic glory days-now supplanted by the indignities of aging-in what turn out to be their final moments.With uncanny insight into the less virtuous corners of the male psyche, Fernanda Torres brings us five friends who once milked the high life of Rio's Bossa Nova age and are now left with memories-parties, marriages, divorces, fixations, inhibitions, bad decisions-and the grim realities of getting old. Alvaro lives alone and bemoans the evils of his ex-wife. Silvio can't give up the excesses of sex and drugs. Ribeiro is a vain, Viagra-abusing beach bum. Neto is the square, a faithful husband until the end. Ciro is the Don Juan envied by all-but the first to die. Cutting in on these swan songs are the testimonies of those the men seduced, cheated, loved, and abandoned: their wives and children. Edgy, funny, and wise, The End is a candid tropical tragicomedy and an epitaph for a lost generation of machos.