Firstly, MacKenzie's act of ventriloquism in voicing this through a young, married American woman is pitch-perfect: there's no gender dissonance that I felt at all. That said, this is a hard book to pin down: it's sharp, it's observant, it makes use of the trope of the 'outsider' to explore not just the place where our narrator and her husband are - Brazil - but also the place where they have come from: contemporary urban America.

With acute descriptions of social and economic inequalities, of protests and riots in the streets, of racial integration and immigration ('émigré - you only ever hear that term used in reference to the kind of refugee who has a violin case among his baggage; it has a connotation of nobility salvaged from disaster') this is our world filtered through a thoughtful intelligence.

As well as the public side of politics, MacKenzie explores the personal: marriage and gender roles are up for dissection, the privilege and prerogatives that comes from being the one who earns the money, the shifting tides of power within marriage.

This is a book where it's helpful to let go of expectations of a linear narrative: there is no real beginning, middle or end (though the book isn't shapeless): a searching, compelling story or collection of stories - and an interesting writer to watch.

The female narrator is the ‘trailing spouse’ of an American investment banker relocated to Brazil for his job. With no work permit of her own and finding herself at a loose end, Emma becomes a detached social observer, mixing with other privileged women-who-lunch, and overcome with a demoralising lack of purpose, facing a marriage under stress.
Against a background of civil unrest, inter-racial and class conflict, this privileged ex-pat life in ‘gleaming and decrepit’ São Paulo is vividly contrasted with the plight of the city’s socially-marginalised population, holding up a dystopian mirror to failing global neoliberal economic systems around the world.

Mackenzie has written an impressive and thought-provoking examination of the disconnect between liberal empathy and the real engagement need to address the status quo.

This novel is set in Brazil and concerns a young American couple. I found the voice of the trailing spouse/expat wife extremely engaging. Recommended.

Despite Feast Days taking place in Sao Paolo, a colourful and vibrant megacity, most of the ‘action' takes place inside the mind of our narrator, Emma. Emma derogatively describes herself as ancillary to her husband. Her husband's behaviour bears this out. His actions, from courtship to passive aggressive demands for a baby, show her as an expensive accessory.
Emma is not an equal. A man has taken possession of her. In flashback scenes of their early days, he takes control of all the decision making, which she initially finds appealing. Emma has enabled the situation she finds herself in.
In Sao Paolo, we are told men have affairs. It is heavily implied her husband is one of those men, always working later and later. Our couple go out for expensive meals, take frequent holidays and go to parties. The feeling is one of gradual breakdown, both in her marriage and in the streets of Sao Paolo. In Brazil, protest is a national hobby, a means of the country letting off steam.
The novel itself is rather chilly. You want Emma to escape from her marital prison and strike out on her own. Despite her material advantages, you wouldn't want her life.