Cantoras
A Novel
کتاب های مرتبط
- اطلاعات
- نقد و بررسی
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نقد و بررسی
July 1, 2019
In the shadow of a violent dictatorship, five queer women find the courage and strength to live their truth. De Robertis' (The Gods of Tango, 2015, etc.) latest novel starts in 1977 with the Uruguayan military dictatorship suppressing dissidents and homosexuals through rape, jailing, and disappearing. Calling themselves cantoras, or women who sing, five queer women begin to carve out a place for themselves in the world: Flaca, Romina, Anita "La Venus," Malena, and Paz. Brought together by Flaca, the women take a weeklong trip to Cabo Polonio, a sleepy, secluded coastal village, where they find a haven among horrors. On the beach, the women laugh late into the night, make love unabashedly, and share secrets over whiskey and yerba maté. The friends become family. On their first trip, Paz, the youngest, begins to discover an alternative way of being: "A secret way to be a woman. A way that blasted things apart, that melted the map of reality." Rich and luscious, De Robertis' writing feels like a living thing, lapping over the reader like the ocean. Carefully crafted and expertly observed, each sentence is an elegant gift: "Stars clamored around a meager slice of moon," and "she was keenly aware of [her] movements...as if a thread stretched between them, a spider's thread, glimmering and inexhaustibly strong." Over the course of three decades, the women fall in and out of love; have brushes with the brutal regime; defy familial and societal expectations; and, most of all, unapologetically live their lives as cantoras. At one point, the unhappily married La Venus wonders: "Why did life put so much inside a woman and then keep her confined to smallness?" De Robertis' novel allows these women to break those confines and find greatness in themselves and each other. A stunning novel about queer love, womanhood, and personal and political revolution.
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August 19, 2019
This sensuous tale from De Robertis (The Gods of Tango) takes readers to the author’s native Uruguay during the 1970s to follow the harrowing lives of five women living under dictatorship. Bonded as cantoras, or “women who sing” (a coded term for lesbians at the time), Flaca, Romina, Anita, Malena, and Paz escape the oppression of their country’s new regime and enjoy freedom at Cabos Polonio, a little known beach. Flaca is a risk taker who bucks tradition; Paz, a 16-year-old romantic just discovering who she is; Romina, a revolutionary who continues to fight despite punishment; Malena, a mysterious one hiding a dark past; and Anita, a beautiful housewife with dreams beyond her marriage. Back home in Montevideo, people disappear and women are raped, but in Polonio, relationships and romance flourish. Over the course of 35 years, these friends and lovers form a makeshift family as they struggle to find their place and awake to their true desires. After the dissolution of the civic-military dictatorship in 1985, formerly forbidden romances are allowed to take root and the characters learn how to live under democracy. De Robertis does a fine job of probing the harsh realities of what it takes to carve out a life of freedom under an oppressive government.
August 1, 2019
Cantoras is the Spanish word for singers. In her luminous new novel, however, de Robertis' (The Gods of Tango, 2015) uses it to refer to the five queer women in Uruguay who form the heart and soul of the story, singers in the sense that they remain true to themselves and sing in the way they choose to live their lives. In the early 1930s, the government had declared homosexual activity legal, but now, decades later, a coup and subsequent military dictatorship has led to punishment and even death for those who defy the norms. Somehow these women manage not only to survive but to thrive under hostile conditions. De Robertis tells their stories with heart and compassion as the women move back and forth between the city of Montevideo and the hamlet of Cabo Polonio. These five vibrant yet very different women are open to new experiences and unafraid to choose their own reality as they struggle with notions of family, friendship, and love while living under the shadow of despotism. A literary ode to difference.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)
August 30, 2019
In 1977 Uruguay, where the military flattens all dissent, five women risk everything to buy a rudimentary house on remote Cabo Polonio, a sanctuary from their difficult lives in Montevideo. They are bright, brisk ringleader Flaca, who runs her parents' butcher shop; the ineffably beautiful La Venus, married but initially paired with Flaca; Romina, once in love with Flaca and now keeping her head down and her mind on her studies with her brother in prison; Malena, locked up tightly in a mysterious past but ultimately the most daring of the group; and teenage Paz, ready to learn about life and love and with heady experience all her own. All cantoras, a word meaning both female singers and lesbians, these women engage with one another as peers, as old relationships break up and new ones form, all the while clarifying the horror of living under a regime that has not just deformed but essentially stolen their lives. The result is luscious and penetrating writing that founders only in the last pages, when a tragedy involving one of the women is rushed, simply not giving her her due. VERDICT Multi-award-winning Uruguayan American author de Robertis (The Gods of Tango) offers a story both personal and political, presenting the lives of five beautifully crafted individuals while making the torments of a repressive regime very real. [See Prepub Alert, 3/4/19.]--Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal
Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
August 30, 2019
Social activist and novelist (e.g., the multi-best-booked The Invisible Mountain), de Robertis opens her new work in 1977 Uruguay, where the military flattens all dissent and being homosexual is virtually life-threatening. Here, five cantoras ("female singers") befriend one another, traveling between the remote, uninhabited Cabo Polonio and Montevideo as they struggle to live their lives. At 25,000 copies, not the hugest first printing, but touted as the author's masterpiece.
Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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