The latest addition to my website is Mercè Rodoreda‘s Jardí vora el mar (Garden by the Sea). This is a beautiful book, narrated by the gardener to a summer residence, serving successive families. We follow him as he carefully and lovingly tends the plants and garden while the well-to-do – the owner and their guests … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Hilda Hilst‘s A obscena senhora D (The Obscene Madame D). Our narrator is Hillé,a sixty year old Brazilian woman. Her husband, Ehud, has died and she has now become even more reclusive than she was when he was alive. Ehud was always interested in sex and a normal … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Helena Parente Cunha‘s Mulher no Espelho (Woman Between Mirrors). This is a feminist, modernist novel. The author and the main character are seemingly two sides of the same coin, with the character, who pushes against the author, but does not push against the patriarchal society in which she … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Heloneida Studart‘s Selo das despedidas (later: Sem dizer adeus) [Seal of Farewell]. This is a grim feminist novel, which starts with the suicide of a woman, Maria das Graças Nogueira de Alencar, from a distinguished family. She leaves her eight notebooks to her niece, Mariana and we follow … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Adriana Lisboa‘s Azul-corvo (Crow Blue). Our heroine is Evangelina, known as Vanja, a thirteen year old, born in the US but who has spent most of her life in Brazil with her Brazilian mother, Suzana. Like most of the women in the family, Suzana dies young and Vanja … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Nélida Piño‘s A república dos sonhos (The Republic of Dreams). This is a long and complicated family saga, which jumps around chronologically – we start off with the family matriarch, Eulália, dying but she takes six hundred pages to do so. Madruga is an ambitious young man in … Read more
The latest edition to my website is Viola Di Grado‘s Settanta acrilico trenta lana (70% Acrylic 30% Wool). This is a depressing novel about two Italian women, Livia and Camila, mother and daughter, who live in Leeds, England. At the beginning of the novel, Stefano, husband and father of the two is killed in a … Read more
Just a brief post to refer you to this article in today’s Guardian. It is about rediscovered women writers in Latin America, particularly Mexico. I was familiar with Luisa Josefina Hernández and have a copy of her Nostalgia de Troya. Several other of her works are available but only in Spanish. Sadly they they have … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Magda Szabó‘s Abigél (Abigail). This first appeared in Hungary fifty years ago where it has been Szabó’s most popular novel. It is set in 1943-44 and tells the story of the fourteen-fifteen year old Georgina (Gina) Vitay. Her mother died when she was two and she has been … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Sara Lidman‘s Tjärdalen [The Tar Still]. This is Lidman’s first novel, telling the story of a remote Swedish village. Nils has spent a long time building a tar still, from which he hopes to make some money. However, just before he is to light it, he finds it … Read more