Sometimes a book will burrow into your brain, into your bones. As I read CANTORAS, I had to remind myself to slow down at times, to take in the beautiful prose, to not shorten my time with these well-drawn characters. I would start reading faster because the tension between these characters, or the tensions with the cogs of the Uruguayan dictator-state in the 70s and 80s, would be too much not to KNOW and I wanted everyone to be happy, to be safe. But that was difficult to do at that time in history for queer women, and too much to ask of these pages.

This book is about five women who find a home in a remote seaside hamlet, away from Montevideo and the city streets that make it difficult to be their true selves. The history of Uruguay is examined through their eyes. And the ways even their families cannot be trusted to see them for who they really are, lest they all get imprisoned. Or disappeared. So they make their own family. The bonds of these five over the years and decades of the book spoke to the strength of supportive communities even in times of peril. The way that human connection can sometimes be the only thing that saves a person; and the ways even that can fall short.

CANTORAS shook me both in sadness and in laughter. I'm so, so grateful for having read it. My lovely giveaway copy from @idleutopia_reads is full of dog-ears and underlined passages, as well as her lovely, sincere note—perfectly echoing those themes of community and connection—tucked in the pages. Thank you, Karen.

By the way, I'm ready for someone to make a
Paz &
Flaca &
Romina &
Malena &
La Venus
t-shirt because I would love to run into people who know these characters; I would feel a kinship with that reader the way I do with people wearing those A Little Life character shirts. Who's sending Antoni this shirt??

The thing is, what de Robertis has written transcends place with its universal feelings; CANTORAS allows the reader to join these women on a rich, emotional journey into the human experience.