Through fiction for teenagers, Moacyr Scliar tells us about the problems that smoking can cause for our health and for living with others. The author combines his knowledge as a doctor to create a story that informs about smoking without making moral judgments.
It’s the father who smokes in the story, not the teenager, which is a different approach from other books on the subject, which generally portray the teenager as the “problem” person in the family. This way, the young reader can ask questions about smoking without feeling intimidated.
The protagonist, Sérgio, is a teenager who lives with his mother in the countryside after his parents split up. But his mother falls in love again and decides to get married. Sérgio doesn’t like the idea very much, but he comes to terms with it and decides to go to the capital to live with his father, a closed man whom, in truth, he didn’t know very well. One of the things the boy didn’t know was that his father smoked two packs of cigarettes a day, while Sérgio hated cigarettes.
How to help his father recognize and face his addiction? That’s the great task the young protagonist of the story takes on.
