The Head of the Saint by Socorro Acioli

 

Earlier this month my mom, who originally found out about this book after learning about some of the awards for children's literature that the author got, introduced The Head of the Saint by Socorro Acioli to me. Every now and then my mom will find a book online that she thinks we'll both like, so she buys it and we take turns reading and talking about it. The Head of the Saint just so happened to be one of those books, and I'm glad it was.

When I first read it I wasn't really sure what to expect, and I thought it would be kind of a coming-of-age story, but I was met with something that resembled more of a fairytale or a fable. The characters and the writing style were pretty charming, and though the story wasn't very long and I wasn't too attached to the characters, I still really did enjoy the story as a whole and was somewhat satisfied by the ending. 

The story takes place in what seems to be the 20th century, and after the death of his mother, a boy named Samuel takes a tiring journey by himself through the Brazilian countryside with little to no food to get to the small town where his grandmother and father live to meet them for the first time. After he gets rejected by his family, he goes to the nearby forest for shelter and finds the empty head of the statue of a saint, where he stays and rests. When he wakes up he finds that he can hear the prayers of the women in the village inside the head and with the help of one of the boys in the village, he tries to grant their wishes.

Though I did enjoy the book it certainly wasn't perfect, and the fact that all the women in the village wished for the same thing, marriage, seemed kinda stereotypical. Also, the characters weren't as fleshed out as they could've been and the ending had a lot of wasted potential. Still, I don't think it was a bad book since I enjoyed reading it for the most part, so it gets a decent rating of 3.5/5.

- Chloe N.H.