From award-winning Brazilian author Eliana Alves Cruz comes a raw, propulsive novel-in-translation about a mother and daughter who work as live-in maids for the rich, and the tragedy they unwittingly bear witness to.Eunice works for a rich family in a building called The Golden Plate, in an unnamed city in contemporary Brazil. She lives with her daughter Mabel in a small room assigned to them. Eunice does the best that she can, though with a child and ailing mother both dependent solely on her, Eunice's life is a series of limitations. As Mabel grows up, her dissatisfaction with the forced smallness of their world becomes difficult to bear, and she is driven to work towards new possibilities for herself. But when tragedy strikes, and a little boy dies, both women must decide whether to speak out about the injustices they have spent so long orbiting.
Told in direct, agile and evocative prose,
Solitaria is a liberation novel of the most rousing order. Through the book's examination of spaces and whose presence within them is permissible, the world of the Golden Plate unfurls, and an unflinching portrait emerges of modern-day Brazil, its legacies of colonial violence still haunting rooms, big and small, across the country.
The first work of translation on the Alchemy list: a raw, propulsive novel about a mother and daughter who work as live-in maids for the rich, and the tragedy they unwittingly bear witness to.
Mabel has been staying in the Golden Plate—the most expensive building on the block, in an unnamed city in Brazil—for almost her entire life. Yet her presence there is merely tolerated: she inhabits a miniscule room with her mother, Eunice, who alongside Mabel provides round-the-clock attention and care for the wealthy family who lives there. As Mabel grows up, her dissatisfaction with the forced smallness of her life becomes difficult to bear, and she is driven to work towards new possibilities for herself.
Eunice does the best that she can—uneducated, and with a daughter and ailing mother both depending solely on her, her life is a series of limitations. She moves through the rooms of the penthouse suite in silent servitude, and though Mabel is ashamed of this invisibility act they've both perfected, the era of slavery is still fresh in the country's consciousness, and Eunice thinks it best not to dwell too hard on such things. But when tragedy strikes, and a little boy dies, Eunice must decide if she can face the indifference and injustices of the ruling class she has spent so long orbiting.
Told through direct, agile and evocative prose, Solitaria is a liberation novel of the most rousing order. Through the book's awareness of space and whose presence is permissible, the world of the Golden Plate unfurls, and an unflinching portrait emerges of modern-day Brazil, its legacies of colonial violence haunting rooms across the country, both big and small.
