Eliete: A Normal Life

Eliete is a normal woman in her early forties, born just after the Carnation Revolution. There is hardly anything extraordinary about her life, and yet she enthralls us with her desire to live, and to understand people and things. Her daughters are mostly on the internet and abroad; her husband is easier to meet on Facebook than at home. Who cares if Eliete, who feels strongly that her youth is gone, allows herself to experiment on Tinder? She would prefer to reignite her relationship with her husband, but he doesn't seem interested. Eliete stays cool and doesn't despair. Then suddenly she finds someone and something different - an inkling of love? Is Duarte a real-life version of one of the heroes in the teenage magazines of her childhood? And what on earth does it mean when her dementia-suffering grandmother says that Portugal's former dictator is part of their family story? With precise language and acute psychological insight, Cardoso creates a multifaceted character of great strength. Ironic, but by no means distanced, Eliete reflects on an apparently ordinary life against the background of a three-generation story of the 20th and 21st century in Portugal. Translated from the Portuguese by Angel Gurria-Quintana