Alice no país das rachaduras

This article focuses on the representation of consumption in Maria Valéria Rezende’s novel Quarenta dias (2014). Departing from Zygmunt Bauman’s perspective on the collateral damages of consumer capitalism in Consuming Life (2007) and from Silviano Santiago’s considerations about poverty in “O cosmopolitismo do pobre” (2004), I argue that Rezende provides a critique to the invisibility of low-income (or no-income) consumers in consumer society. I demonstrate that, through the path that the protagonist of Quarenta dias follows between her daughter’s consumerist world and the survival experience of those that she encounters in the streets of Porto Alegre while wandering through the city, Rezende makes visible certain segments of Brazilian society, such as Northeastern migrants and homeless people. While on this path, the protagonist both rejects and values consumption, depending on its intensity and the reach of its social consequences.