From the author of The Love of Singular Men comes a book about three brothers with a dark inheritance. The Alencar Costa e Oliveira family talk to each other in inside jokes, often saying the opposite of what they mean, or repeating the same sentence until it acquires new meaning. But the family has another characteristic: none of them has ever died of illnesses or accident - they all die of acute melancholy. Gracefully and wisely, Heringer traces the story of the brothers and the Gloria neighbourhood of Rio de Janeiro.