Welcome to Litsy!

1970s Uruguay in the midst of a dictatorship where family members disappear, where curfews keep people indoors and where secrets could get you killed - five queer women take a huge chance to escape to a deserted seaside village for a week where they can be free to speak and love openly. But can one week change anything? This novel is filled with heat - both passion and rage. All five characters are unforgettable I ADORED this book!

I loved this book so much. Heartbreaking, enraging, heartwarming and hopeful all at once, and full of characters that will be with me for a long time to come. These women stood in their truth and with each other and built a life that is a thing of beauty and power. ♥️

What a fantastic start to #ReadingAmericas2023! A group of lesbian women living under dictatorship in #Uruguay find one another and a small house at the beach where they can be their true selves. This is a wonderful exploration of female friendship, love, and support of one another. My first 5⭐️ read of the year.

A stunner of a novel about five queer women in 1970/1980s Uruguay and the resistance, joy, and horrors they lived through.

this is a very intense book, immersive and deep and not a very quick read, but it‘s so good. this follows 5 lesbians in Uruguay during a time it‘s illegal to be gay. you slowly learn the women‘s histories in hindsight as they all grow to trust each other more and help each other through life. please look up TW before reading.

This wasn't a particularly fast read, but it was certainly a good one. I loved learning more about Uruguay and following these women as they tried to navigate so many shifting climates and dynamics. And Malena, my God! #historicalfiction

I loved this story of 5 queer women who call themselves Cantoras, “women who sing” 💛☺️. It takes place in Uruguay, a place I knew nothing about, and follows their lives and loves through several decades. They all buy a beach shack together to escape on vacations from the oppressive city life.

Tender and realistic, political and personal, this is a truly beautiful book. It was a recommendation for me by myTBR.co.

Thanks for the tag @Eggs ! Here are my responses for #WondrousWednesday .

📚 Tagged
🍌 Bananas
🤖 The next Murderbot novella
🙏 Imminent cooler temperatures

Feel like joining in? Consider yourself tagged!

https://youtu.be/t_yTnKCeziI

Books mentioned:

The Parking Lot Attendant by Nafkote Tamirat

Catch the Rabbit by Lana Bastašić

Mountolive by Lawrence Durrell

Cantoras by Carolina De Robertis

Razorblade Tears by S.A. Cosby

Multitudes by Lucy Caldwell

The Book of Unknown Americans by Cristina Henriquez

A Town Called Solace by Mary Lawson

The Bridge of Beyond - Simone Schwarz-Bart

Turbulence by David Szalay

🌈🌈🌈🌈

Such a beautifully written story.

I love this book!! I also highly recommend the Lit Hub interview with De Robertis. It made me so curious to travel to Uruguay - beautiful characters, character development and resilience in the face of tragedy, all set in beautiful ocean landscape.

I stalked the mail all day today... So excited to jump into this stack 🥰

Have you read any of these? I'd love to hear what you think I should read first!

This is another great book I finished today!

I knew nothing of the history of Uruguay and learned a lot from this book. Very deft exploration of what it means to have to silence a part of yourself. Reading this now, about a country experiencing a coup and dictatorship, was especially powerful.

#integrateyourshelf @ChasingOm @Emilymdxn

These are the most recent books I‘ve borrowed from the library. The two hardbacks are among the first physical books I‘ve gotten since March. I‘m grateful for our Books to Go pick up service and our ebooks!

#3Books
#BooksIveBorrowedFromtheLibrary

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2 One of my favorite things about this book was how beautifully it‘s written. It‘s so well paced and at times I just didn‘t want to stop reading. The characters were well developed and felt like real people. I enjoyed learning about Uruguay‘s history and from the perspective of different women. I really enjoyed reading this!

The pacing is so rich, reading this novel felt like floating atop the waves. The characters are phenomenally written, each remarkably distinct and real, which doesn't always happen with a large cast. This is the first novel I've read that was set in Uruguay and now I want to visit to see the country for myself.
And look at that: It's also my June #bookspin !
@TheAromaofBooks

A little something for me while my son is on Zoom listening to euphonium legends talk about their musical influences. It's an odd juxtaposition.

To say I loved this would be a massive understatement. These women are so richly drawn they feel like old friends and in a way they are. When I was a “baby gay” finding my sea legs, I was welcomed into a group of women that nurtured and supported me (and introduced me to my wife.) Reading about these brave, remarkable, revolutionary women felt like coming home. 5⭐️.

Getting a late start to this #stayhome24in48 this weekend. My out-of-town neighbors called me at 7AM to let in a repairman, I filmed two YouTube videos, talked to my mom twice, sent some cancellation emails to clients...finally sitting down to read. Phew! Here‘s hoping the rest of the day isn‘t like the first few hours have been! #24in48

I toggled from Litsy to my podcast app, and the title of the latest Read or Dead episode made me LOL. I sometimes do find myself influenced my a cover, but not that often. Tagged book was the last one I bought. I sometimes wake before my alarm, sometimes use the snooze button, and am sometimes awoken by the four-legged alarm clock. 😎

#friyayintro

I love a novel that will teach me some of the history of a country. I found it fascinating to learn about Uruguay, a country that I know little about. I did feel disconnected from the five women until about the half way point of this novel. I wonder if I would have felt differently reading this in print rather than listening to it on audio. 4 🌟

The first time — which would become legend among them — they entered in darkness.
#firstlinefridays

It was something gentler than lust, and more essential: a connection so instinctive it almost seemed an extension of herself.

It was strange, she thought, how you could live all your life in a home defined by people who loved you and took care of you and shared ancestors with you and yet did not entirely see you, people whom you protected by hiding yourself.

I can't with Cantoras?

This one has So Much Love for it. I clearly must have been reading a different book? I didn't love this one at all. From the start. I don't know - there was just something that didn't work for me I guess.

This one has a LOT of love. But, I'm wondering if it picks up speed? I'm underwhelmed so far? What am I missing? Am I to wait a little more? I'll admit I'm not too far in yet so I'm holding out hope.

Top 10 of 2019 - fiction picks

The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern - I hoped I would love this novel, and I'm so happy I did. It's a love story to the idea of stories, and the difference they can make in the world.

Cantoras by Carolina de Robertis - this novel was feisty and heartbreaking and joyful, like it's unforgettable characters. My favorite non-genre read of the year.

(Continued in comments)

My favourite book of December is the tagged novel. I rounded up brief reviews of this and a few other faves on my blog:
https://lindypratch.blogspot.com/2020/01/december-reading-round-up.html

And these are the 12 books I gave 5 stars to this year. These were all so so good, but Cantoras by Carolina de Robertis is by far my absolute favorite of the year, and a new all-time fave as well! Pleeeeease go read it! Have you read any of these? Do you agree or disagree with my love for them? What was your favorite book this year? YAY BOOKS!!

My fiction favourites of the past decade, subject to change at whim, particularly in the case of which titles by Ali Smith and Helen Humphreys. #top10ofthedecade

A handful of lesbians create community and relative safety with each other while living under the brutal oppression of military dictatorship in Uruguay. This immersive novel shines with warmth and humanity, and spans decades—1977 to 2013—documenting changes in society along the way. #LGBTQ #Latinx

“I think silence killed her.”
“Yes,” Diana said. “That is the way of silence.”
“What do you mean?” La Venus said gently, knowing there was more beneath the surface.
“That the silence of the dictatorship, the silence of the closet, as we call it now—all of that is layered like blankets that muffle you until you cannot breathe.”

Early morning quiet reading time with this beautiful book.

Stunning, heartbreaking, revelatory, hopeful. This story about five queer women in Uruguay creating their own family is beautiful and hard, but never feels stifling. Each of the novel's main characters is given depth and intention, and together they weave such a magnificent tapestry. Will be one of my top reads of the year. (Trigger warnings for rape, suicide, conversion therapy.)

Where do I even begin? This story of five queer Uruguayan women during the height of the military dictatorship is so damn good I don‘t even have words for it. I know it‘s a bookish cliché, but I did not want to move until I finished reading “Cantoras.” It‘s absolutely one of my favorite books this year.

Doesn‘t sound great for the book but where do you meet librarians like this?😜

Such a wonderful book. Each of the five Cantoras are complex and real, and their attempts to live life on their own terms, under a repressive regime and culture, was told with honesty and care. #queerbooks

Cantoras means singer but also a slang term for women who love other women. 5 women in Uruguay find a secluded beach area in Cabo Pollonio where they make a safe space to be themselves in the 1970‘s away from the city and its dictatorship. There was a heady desire in here that lead the way to personal evolutions onto personal revolutions all the while Uruguay is also in a revolution. This is easily a top 3 book of the year for me. Loved it.

Where to even begin? This was absolutely incredible, one of the most beautiful and moving books I‘ve ever read. This story of five queer women becoming themselves in a time and place where it was a danger to even think about it, the love & joy, pain & turmoil they fought through together, is so damn good I barely have words for it. I don‘t usually cry over books but this got me a few times. It‘s phenomenal. Read it. My new fave of the year. 5/5 🌟

It seemed, at times, that this was the only way the world would be remade as the heroes had dreamed: one woman holds another woman, and she in turn lifts the world.

👆🏻👆🏻👆🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈

“I don‘t know where this all ends,” Romina said.

“Where what ends?”

“All of it. The nightmare. We might never have our country back, but even if we do, then what? How do we restore what‘s been broken? If you shatter a plate, it‘s never whole again.”

She‘d thought they might get relief from the city, perhaps make friends, but she hadn‘t known they could come to feel like something more than friends, something larger, a kind of alternative family stitched together by the very fact that they‘d been torn from the fabric of the accepted world.

But now it seemed to her, as she stood knee-deep in waves, that there was no greater life achievement than this, than learning the secrets of how to melt a woman open, and she thought yes, why not, that‘s what I want to be when I grow up, a woman like Flaca, and to hell with the danger, to hell with prison cells, to hell with my mother‘s disapproval, I don‘t even care if they kill me for it. At least I‘ll have lived along the way.

They were perfect together, or, more accurately, together they shaped perfection out of nothing and cradled it in their arms.

This book had already been on my master TBR after reading the synopsis in an “upcoming releases” post somewhere a few months back. But then Adriana at perpetualpages on YT did one of their “5 reasons to read” videos about it and I knew I had to get to it as soon as it was out. Took a few extra days but I‘m super eager to dive in now! #nowreading

I was late to a scheduled podcast recording yesterday because I just had to finish this book first. It is beautifully written about five women living in Uruguay, building a found family to live as who they really are, despite dictators, trauma, and fear. ⤵️