Cantoras

by Carolina De Robertis

Paper Book, 2019

Status

Checked out

Genres

Publication

New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2019.

Description

"From the highly acclaimed, award-winning author of The Gods of Tango, a revolutionary new novel about five wildly different women who, in the midst of the Uruguayan dictatorship, find each other as lovers, friends, and ultimately, family. In 1977 Uruguay, a military government has crushed political dissent with ruthless force. In an environment where citizens are kidnapped, raped, and tortured, homosexuality is a dangerous transgression. And yet, despite such societal realities, Romina, Flaca, Anita "La Venus," Paz, and Malena--five cantoras, women who "sing"--somehow, miraculously, find each other and discover an isolated cape, Cabo Polonio, inhabited by just a lonely lighthouse keeper and a few rugged seal hunters. They claim this place as their secret sanctuary. Over the next 35 years, their lives move back and forth between Cabo Polonio and Montevideo, the city they call home, as they return, sometimes together, sometimes in pairs, with lovers in tow, or alone. Throughout it all, the women will be tested repeatedly--by their families, lovers, society, and each other--as they fight to live authentic lives. A genre-defining novel and De Robertis's masterpiece, Cantoras is a breathtaking portrait of queer love, community, forgotten history, and the strength of the human spirit. De Robertis has written a novel that is at once timeless and groundbreaking--a tale about the fire in all our souls and those who make it burn"--… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member larryerick

I've struggled with how to write this review. Am I writing it for those who might read it? Am I writing it for those who have already read it and seek to compare responses? It occurred to me I'm writing it for the one person who might actually read it. Now that my audience is clear, I will say I

looked forward to reading this and ended up quite disappointed. Ultimately, it reminded me of the wife of a guy I used to work with. She wrote harlequin romances. (I mean that generically, like people use "kleenex" when they mean facial tissue of whatever manufacturer that seemed handy at the time.) In any event, my co-worker and his wife would go off to a new city, often a foreign one, stay long enough to pick up some local flavor, a detail of two about actual stuff in the city, and then come back home and she would write a totally fictitious romance novel with what they learned on the trip as a backdrop. Anyone who had never been to the particular city used in the book, would ever know if what details were provided were true or not. In this book's case, I ask: Is it true all people in Uruguay drink mate like it's holy communion and when they're not drinking mate, they're passing a whiskey flask around but without the same reverence? Never having been to Uruguay, I don't know, but I suspect I might know the answer. Also, in a city that's a major Atlantic ocean seaport, do people really have to travel for hours to find a beach in order to look out and see the vast waters before them? I also suspect I know the answer to that. But, despite never having been to Uruguay, I have been around human relationships for a long time, and I have yet to see a relationship that...oh, never mind. Let's just say the author has a very, very different value system than I do about intimate relationships, and I'm not talking about sexuality, I'm talking about obligations to those who have provided long-term love and support without complaint. No doubt, folks have and will continue to love this book. I just don't want to spend any time with them. I also doubt they care. It's clear the author doesn't.

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LibraryThing member NeedMoreShelves

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.)

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LibraryThing member Beamis12

Freedom. In 1970s Uruguay freedom was not to be found. Called the process, the country was under a brutal dictatorship, a system that cared little for innocence or guilt. A system that took, people, rights, joy and made them disappear. For the five women in this story this wasn't the only type of

freedom not available to them, they also did not have the freedom to love who they wanted. Their same sex desire must be kept hidden at all costs. They were Cantoras.

They find a place in an isolated coastal village, a place that will cement their love, friendships and provide a stable base throughout the years. We learn each of their backgrounds, some who have suffered from base treatment of the dictatorship, one from her own family. We follow them for four decades as they struggle, come apart and come together again. The bond the women form with each other, the friendship that endures changing partners and lost loves is the wonder of this novel. Their fight for freedom of both sorts is a formidable force. It is amazing what a person can go through, and still have the power to love, albeit with scars.

A beautiful, moving book, one where the characters work their way into your heart. A warning though for those who find explicit same sex scenes uncomfortable, though I thought they were well done and helped define the story.

"Why did life put so much inside a woman and then keep her confined to smallness?"

"What is love," she said. "if it can't hold all the channels of the spirit."

"The essence of dictatorship, she thought. On the bus, on the srptreet, at home, no matter where you are or how ordinary you seem, you're in a cage."

ARC from Edelweiss.

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LibraryThing member Citizenjoyce

Cantoras by Carolina De Robertis is a Uruguayan novel about a group of lesbians. It follows them through decades showing changing views of homosexuality and political oppression. De Robertis knows how to write both characters and politics.

LibraryThing member RidgewayGirl

You know the kind of book where you forget that you're reading words on a page and all of a sudden it's much later than you'd wanted to stay up? This is that kind of novel. Set in Uruguay during the civic-military regime during the seventies and eighties, when Uruguayans lived under constant

surveillance and danger of arrest, the novel follows a group of queer women who find a haven of sorts in an isolated beach community. For a few days or a week at a time, they can live authentically, although always careful of the people around them.

De Robertis takes her time, revealing the women's histories slowly, as the years go by, as well as taking the women forward as they age. It's a bit of a balancing act, illuminating recent Uruguayan history to readers who know very little about that small South American country, while not boring those who might know more, and while keeping the focus on the five women at the center of the story.

At times dramatic, at times understated, I found this novel to be one that fully captured my attention. I'm looking forward to De Robertis's next novel.

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LibraryThing member brenzi

"A cantora," Flaca said, flopping another fish into the clean pile, "is a woman who sings"......"A woman like us, Malena said." (Page 37)

This is a book you can really sink into and allow yourself to be completely engrossed by the story. I knew little about Uruguay in the late 70s but it was another

brutal dictatorship in South America, the second I've read about this year. This story highlights the horrors of being a queer woman at this time. Not only was the government against you but so were a great number of the populace. It wasn't something easily admitted to, so when five lesbian women somehow find each other and gather together enough money to purchase a shack on a squirt of land on the Atlantic coast where they have the freedom to be themselves.....well, it just was so uncommon an idea that they managed to pull it off.

The book details their individual lives and I came to admire their tenacity and ability to create a loving family, complete with all the warts that may be found in any family, but fiercely loyal. The shack on the Atlantic coast provided a warm respite from the horrors of the dictatorship in Montevideo, the capital city where they all got their start. I really enjoyed my time with Paz, La Venus, Romina, Flaca and Malena.

Beautifully written, historical fiction at its best, and highly recommended.

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LibraryThing member rayski

I grabbed this book because I was interested in learning something about Uruguay, its dictatorship and what it is like to live under one. Guess I'm preparing for 2024 just in case. Although I see why so many reviews see this a book about being a lesbian under extreme suppressed times, but I saw it

more about the suppression of being different. My feeling using lesbians just made the story easier to make the point. De Robertis did really well to develop all 5 women, saving the most troubling story of Malena for the last. Malena and Paz were my favorites, the former experiencing extreme horror and the latter too young to know different having grown up when the dictatorship was already well established. The author painted a pretty clear picture of what life is like in that environment. It's well written, very easy read and overall very enjoyable but pretty predictable.

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