Violeta among the Stars

suddenly\r\n\r\nI should have stayed at home, I should have stayed at home, I should have stayed at home, for some time, seconds, hours, I can do nothing,\r\n\r\nsuddenly I stop\r\n\r\n\r\nVioleta is driving along a lonely stretch of late-night motorway, in the midst of a fearsome storm. When her tired eyes close for just a second, her car veers off the road, rolls down a muddy embankment, over and over, and comes to rest on an empty stretch of sodden ground.\r\n\r\n And as she lies amid the wreckage of her car, suspended between this world and the next, Violetas life will quite literally flash before her eyes . . .\r\n\r\nScenes from her past overlap with what happened right before the accident: her upbringing with her distant, critical mother; her fathers mysterious double-life; her troubled relationship with her daughter; her life on the road as she drives between waxing product-selling appointments with breaks at motorway service stations, the abuse from other travellers mocking her size, the alcohol, the risky encounters with lorry drivers on filthy public toilet floors...\r\n\r\nVioleta Among the Stars weaves memories and feelings as Violeta reflects on her death, her life, her reality and her dreams. An astonishing portrait of a seemingly insignificant life, from one of Portugals greatest living writers.\r\n\r\nTranslated from the Portuguese by Angel Gurria-Quintana