Abstract: | This article contributes to the scholarship on Portuguese writer José Cardoso Pires as well as the study of the neorealist short story in Portugal. It analyzes the ending of the neorealist short story as a moment of utopian projection and draws a comparison with Cardoso Pires's short story endings. This study demonstrates that Cardoso Pires displaces the ending of the story as a moment of concordance to a moment of continuing crisis. The author suggests that through the design of problematic narratorial voices that advance ambiguity and irony, Cardoso Pires requires from the reader an engagement with the text that mirrors the writer's engagement in society. |