The latest addition to my website is Lygia Fagundes Telles‘ As Meninas (The Girl in the Photograph). This novel was set in the late 1960s and published in 1973, during the period of the military dictatorship in Brazil. It tells the story of three young women – Ana Clara, Lorena and Lião – who are studying at university and living in a hostel together, run by (fairly liberated) Catholic nuns. We follow the stories of the three women (not one as the title implies)and their relationships. Lorena comes from a rich family but she is the only one of the three who is still a virgin as she is obsessed with a married, much older doctor who does not seem to reciprocate her feelings. Ana Clara comes from a poor background but has been successful as a model but is now in a harmful relationship with a drug dealer, though engaged to an unattractive rich man. Lião is the revolutionary, her boyfriend is in jail and she is concerned that her group are all talk and no action. The three get on well but very much struggle with their lives which do not seem to improve much during the course of the book.