Liar's Dice

In September 1972, twelve-year-old Dolores Hamilton begins classes at the British School of Rio de Janeiro unable to read or write. She has recently moved to Rio from Santanésia, a small village in the Brazilian interior, with her English father, Ian, and her Brazilian mother, Isabela. Her identical twin, Margarita (Mita), who has cerebral palsy and epilepsy, is not with them; before the move, their parents sent Mita to Queen Mary's Hospital for Children in Carshalton, England, without telling Dolores. The novel alternates between Dolores's present life in Rio and flashbacks to the family's years in Santanésia, tracing the twins' bond and the decisions that tore the family apart.

When Dolores's English teacher, Mr. P. (Michael Parker), assigns an essay, she fills her blue book with drawings meant to imitate writing. Mr. P. discovers her secret and offers to tutor her after school behind the hydrangea bushes, beginning with the alphabet. Dolores is frightened, her hand shaking when she tries to form letters, but she stays and practices alone after the lesson.

A flashback to Carnaval 1968 establishes the severity of Mita's condition. At age seven, the twins are chosen to lead a parade as representations of the Ibejis, twin gods in the Candomblé religion. During the parade, Dolores keeps Mita dancing in step through intense eye contact, but Mita glances up at their father, trips, and collapses into her first major seizure. Dolores learns that Mita had minor seizures as an infant, a fact her parents never disclosed.

In Rio, Dolores mourns Mita's absence and clashes with her parents. She overhears Mummy telling a friend that sending Mita away was better for Dolores, repeating a doctor's advice to think of the well child. Dolores confronts Mummy, declaring Mita will never forgive them. Flashbacks show Mita's condition worsening in Santanésia as orthopedic boots restrict her mobility and seizures grow more severe.

Dolores befriends Andrea, a bold Brazilian-Italian classmate. When a cruel substitute teacher canes Andrea until she bleeds, Dolores snatches his ruler and throws it out the window. Andrea becomes her closest ally. At Andrea's apartment in Lapa, a rough neighborhood, Dolores meets Andrea's mother, Tia Glória, who works as a prostitute, and Sofia, a travesti friend of Tia Glória's who recites French poetry. Over time, Dolores confides that her twin has been sent to a hospital in England.

A breakthrough arrives one night when Dolores, alone with a beginner's book called Janet and John, sounds out letters aloud instead of whispering them. The letter-sounds join into word-sounds, and she reads for the first time. Reading unlocks writing, and Mr. P. gives her a green leather notebook. Dolores demands Mita's address from her parents and, with Andrea's help, composes an aerogram, an airmail letter, to Mita. No response comes.

When Mr. P. announces he is returning to England, Dolores is devastated. He promises to visit Mita at the hospital, but Dolores refuses his address. Andrea takes Dolores to Arpoador, a coastal point, and teaches her to lean backward off the cliff's edge, trusting the wind to hold them. The wind catches them, and Dolores lets Mr. P.'s address blow away.

A pornographic photograph the girls found and showed at school leads to Andrea's expulsion; the headmaster, Mr. Walker, puts Dolores on probation. Later, at her parents' dinner party, Dolores discovers Mr. Walker in a compromising situation with another man and uses what she witnessed to demand Andrea's reinstatement. Mr. Walker agrees, but Andrea refuses to return.

In March 1973, Dolores asks her parents directly if Mita is dead. Mummy's sherry glass snaps in her hand; Daddy calls Dolores despicable. A card finally arrives from the hospital signed "Maggie," not Margarita. Enraged that her sister's name has been erased, Dolores resolves to travel to England. She cracks the family safe and steals her father's blue diamond ring. At a dice club in Lapa, she gambles the ring, hoping to fund the trip. Afterward, a man forces Dolores and Sofia into his car, breaks Dolores's wrist, and steals the ring. Sofia helps Dolores escape, and they hide in a Jewish cemetery where Sofia's mother is buried. Dolores tells Sofia the full truth about Mita for the first time.

Dolores's wrist is set in a cast, and she lies about how it happened. A flashback reveals the day Mita was sent to England: Daddy lured Dolores away to buy a bicycle while Mummy secretly took Mita to the airport. When Dolores returned, Daddy told her Mita was not coming back. An earlier flashback shows the flood and prolonged seizure that preceded this separation.

When the missing ring is discovered, Dolores's parents blame Aparecida, the family's beloved maid, and fire her. Dolores confesses, proving the theft by reciting the safe's combination. Aparecida refuses to stay, telling Dolores she thought she was family but learned she was just a servant. Dolores has now lost both Mita and Aparecida.

Sofia, arrested and tortured by police, attempts suicide. Dolores and Andrea bring her poetry from a French bookshop run by Eduardo, who becomes a quiet mentor to Dolores. Sofia responds to the darkness of Baudelaire's "Spleen" from Fleurs du Mal, and over weeks of reading aloud, she slowly recovers.

In July 1973, one year since Mita's departure, Dolores finds Mita's folded wheelchair in storage and wheels herself to the dining table during a dinner party, announcing she is keeping Mita's place. The next morning, she walks to Arpoador and leans backward off the cliff. The wind dies and she begins to fall, but a gust throws her forward onto the rocks. She is alive.

Dolores returns home to find Mummy on the kitchen floor polishing the wheelchair. Dolores joins her, then Daddy does too, and for the first time the three share their grief. Dolores blames herself for not watching Mita during a village festival, but Daddy tells her it was not her fault: Mita had been on a hospital waiting list for years. He announces they will visit Mita in England.

At Queen Mary's Hospital, Mita is thinner and more diminished than Dolores expected and does not recognize them. Over several days of singing Brazilian children's songs, Dolores coaxes Mita's memory back. Mita completes song lyrics and finally says Dolores's name. They embrace. Daddy refuses to bring Mita home, saying the risk is too great. On their last day, he buys a camera for family photographs, the first since Mita's illness worsened. When Dolores says goodbye, Mita grips her wrist and will not let go. Before leaving, a night nurse shows Dolores a box containing all her aerograms, read to Mita each night. In the visitors' book, Dolores discovers Mr. P.'s signature. He kept his promise.

Back in Rio, Sofia performs at a fashion show, displaying bandages on her wrists as a statement against police torture. Dolores and Andrea introduce Eduardo to Sofia, and the matchmaking plan appears to work. On the beach, Dolores opens Mr. P.'s green notebook and writes the title of her story: "THE GIRL WHO WAS THERE AND NOT THERE." She decides she is writing for herself.

In an epilogue three months later, Dolores runs a letter-writing business at the Feira de São Cristóvão. Mummy and Daddy appear at her table, having waited in line. Mummy sits down, removes her sunglasses, and hands Dolores two cruzeiros, the standard fee. Dolores picks up her pen and asks whom Mummy wants to write to, though she already knows the answer.