I found this hard to read because of the stream of consciousness style, which I have struggled with in other similar reads with minimal structure (Ulysses, Normal People for example), the pace lagged in parts and some of the content was a little difficult (main character Violeta is treated appallingly in places), so it won't be for everyone but interesting nonetheless.

Utterly devastating, beautifully written, completely compelling to the very end.
Enjoyed very much.

Unfortunately this book was not for me. Other readers may enjoy it more, but I could not get into it and ultimately did not finish it.

This was a challenging read. I didn't realise it was told in a stream-of-consciousness style and I found this extremely jarring and challenging, but I appreciated the bravery of the author to tackle it!
This made me feel pretty detached from the story, and I couldn't decide if I was offended by the way Violeta's character was written, or whether it was aimed to stop those judgements from happening.
I didn't feel like I was truly invested, but I know other readers will be.

A breathless tour de force, which must have posed serious translation challenges. This book won’t be to everyone’s taste, but to this particular fan of dysunctional mother/daughter relationships, it rang very true.

This novel is unique in the manner it is written. However, it is hard to read with no chapter breaks and a constant stream of consciousness. In fairness, I enjoy chapters and always make sure I reading at the end of a chapter, so for me, this was not ideal. it is a unique experiment for the adventurous.

A 400 page single-sentence stream-of-consciousness novel might not sound too appealing at first glance, but believe me, it’s worth the effort. It took me a while to sink into it but once I did I was totally drawn in and found it a truly compelling read. It jumps around in time and place, it’s episodic and even repetitive, but once you engage with the eponymous protagonist there’s no getting away from her. The book starts with a car-crash, and as Violeta hangs there trapped in her car, she looks back over her life, and just as our own memories don’t reveal themselves to us in a linear fashion, nor do her memories. Violeta is an obese, ugly, neurotic, frequently drunk saleswoman, sexually predatory and promiscuous, regarded as a freak by those around her and full of self-loathing. Snippet by snippet her back story is filled in as she revisits her past and soon a far more complex person is revealed to us. At first the reader feels unsympathetic to her but gradually, as we delve deep into her mind, our sympathies are engaged. What Violeta has always been deprived of is love and not surprisingly she now finds it difficult to love in her turn, even though she knows her daughter is the best thing to have ever happened to her. It’s a raw and earthy depiction of a sad, troubled woman’s life, inventive, original and deeply moving.

When I first started this - my heart sank a little when I noticed the writing style. It is essentially one stream of consciousness with no chapters and what looked like no structure. Reading it and listening to the talk on the day it launched, I later realised it also actually had no full stops. It is basically one very long sentence. I typically find these kind of books a little difficult to get into. However, a big however …

Violeta amongst the stars is a really unique and interesting concept. Th characters are not at all likeable. Violeta is not troubled but she has issues. She doesn’t have self esteem issues even though she’s described as being fat, a whore, and some other derogatory terms. She sleeps with a lot of men and has from when she was a teen. We are not told why and she doesn’t come across as being a nymphomaniac - I’m extrapolating it’s a reaction to the lack of love she gets from her parents. One stormy night she gets into an accident and her life flashes before her eyes. This is how we learn about her parents, their lives and issues, her daughter Dora, Angelo and snippets from the lives of all the people she meets and interacts with.

For what seems to have no structure, it is actually very cleverly done. You get immersed in the story as different plots unfold and we delve into the characters. At the same time you get random voices overlaying the story and the reality of Violeta’s situation flashing to the surface. This was quite interesting - it is not a quick read due to the style, and I found the last third of the book a little boring. Overall I would give it 3 stars. This is definitely one of those that I would say is not for me but I imagine lots of other people would love this.

I think this beautiful novel was sent to me at the right time. Two things have happened lately. I’ve had a relapse of my long term illness Multiple Sclerosis, and it has affected my sight, balance and vertigo. Secondly, I’ve been reading several books where the central theme is that even small lives can be extraordinary or have a huge effect in the world. I think the two things are linked, because I’m a big believer in finding the right book at the right time. When I don’t have a groaning TBR bookcase, I tend to choose my reading very emotionally. What do I feel reading? I can’t understand readers who are able to read books in chronological order, whatever the subject or however they’re feeling. I really have to be in the mood. It took me several years to read Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, but when I did I absolutely loved it. I think this is the reason many bookworms have buckling shelves - we know we’ll want to read that new book, just not right now.

This particular novel is extraordinary, because it carries a whole lifetime suspended in a single moment. Violeta is drunk and in utter despair when she crashes her car. As she’s thrown around in the car, her seat belt locks and she’s left suspended both physically and metaphorically. As she hangs between life and death, memories of her life flash before her all at once and in no particular order. Memories of her distant mother collide with her everyday life on the road selling waxing products. She remembers moments fumbling on toilet floors with truck drivers she barely knows at motorway service stations. A thousand seemingly ordinary encounters pass through her mind. Her past is also up for scrutiny culminating into how she sacrificed the dreams she had for adolescent relationships that simply let her down. In this epic and poetic meditation, an ordinary life becomes extraordinary.

This whole book is written as a stream of consciousness so don’t expect tidy chronological memories or carefully constructed sentences. This is one, long paragraph without punctuation. This cleverly keeps the reader hanging in the same position as the author. This is a raw examination of the ‘self’, how it is constructed and whether it is ever a constant, unchanging thing. Or is it like Frankenstein’s creature? Hastily stitched from parts of our parents, our experiences, those things we like and dislike. An ever changing collage rather than a single, fixed identity. Memories weave in and out of each other, past and present collide and sentences drift away unfinished. We are listening in on Violeta’s inner thoughts so they are never censored or tidy. This is a troubled woman. She’s at war with her family, her own body and her own anonymous sexual conquests. Yet, even though there’s no real structure or plot, we start to understand her. She has an incredible sense of humour. There is a feminist element too, particularly the way we wage war on body hair - Violeta sells waxing products. There’s also the open expression of sexuality, when young she would experiment with local boys and age now visits truck stops for anonymous sexual with strangers. What is transgressive, is the narrator’s active sex life as a fat woman. I’m a bigger woman, we’re not meant to be attractive in our imperfect bodies. Yet, just like Violeta, I’ve never had a problem finding someone to have sex with. Men are not meant to want sex with fat women, but the truth is, they do.

However, it’s not just other people and our identity. The physical world also shifts around us; the reader’s perception of this world expands at the same time Violeta experiences it. She stands alongside us. She experiences the world around her as layered across time, shown in time-slip moments such as when she recalls the previous days meal at a restaurant, but simultaneously remembers visiting the shop when it was a hair salon she would visit with her mother when. Places and people exist simultaneously in the past and future, something I can definitely understand as I get older. Violeta awoke a fire in me. I had a few moments full of emotion and kinship for those bigger women who accept being the butt of a joke, feel inadequate or even hate their bodies so much they accept the abuse meted out by others. There are elements of the book that are painful, especially when we read about her childhood. This goes some way to explaining the detachment we see in the interactions with her own daughter, highlighting the concept of inter-generational pain. I’ve never read a book like this one, from the structure and the leaps from poetry to philosophy. It reminds me of another book I recently read, where the author attempts to grasp what it is to be a human being. A wonderful, occasionally dark, but unusual look at the world from the perspective of someone whose life is, quite literally, hanging in the balance.

This book will probably not appeal to everyone, but if you're open to reading a stream of consciousness-one-sentence-book with lots of commas, you should give this one a try.

I found it fascinating being in Violeta's head. The repetition of certain sentences gave me an eerie feeling throughout my reading experience. There are a lot of topics discussed in the book, but the main one is Violeta dealing with her mother and being a mother herself and all the grief, hurt and bitterness that can come with those relationships to her mother and daughter. Violeta is hungry, for flesh, food and the love of her family and her biggest enemy is hair (she's a sales person for wax and hair removal).
Altogether a very unique read, that I still think about and it was a quick read for a 400 page long novel.

Thank you very much MacLehose Press for sending a review copy all the way from the UK to New Zealand in exchange for an honest review.

Violeta has crashed her car late at night on the motorway and her soul isn't quite sure whether to stick around or depart for the next life. As she lays in the wreckage waiting to be rescued, her life flashes before her eyes. We see glimpses of her upbringing with highly critical mother, her strained relationship with her daughter Dora and the many dodgy encounters and abuse she faces as she travels between appointments selling waxing products.

The writing style is unconventional. There is very little punctuation and no chapters, which I suppose suits the stream of consciousness format. However, I think the author took this form a little too literally because we got random lines of loosely related thoughts just stuck into the middle of the page, in between sentences. I understand that this is often how our minds work, particularly stressed, anxious ones but it's very difficult to read and understand..

Although I did finish the book, I don't know how much of it I really took in. It was a chore to read and I considered DNFing around 30% when I still wasn't fully on board with it. I only powered through because I hate not finishing books but I can't really say that I enjoyed it more as it went along. I suppose I did slightly get to know the writing style but I didn't really like it and I wouldn't read a book that was written like that again.

I may have enjoyed it more if it had been written in a more traditional style because I think there was an interesting story buried underneath the jarring writing!

I gave this book a go by reading the first few chapters, but it didn't really appeal to me.

Many thanks to the publisher and author for the ARC, but I'm not the right audience for this.

Thank you NetGalley for a chance to read and review this. I really wanted to like this but I couldn't. The stream of consciousness thing is nice, but it also really bored me and I gave up at 30%.

One woman’s story of tragedy intertwined with memories, dreams and feelings. We start the book with Violeta in a violent car crash and the next 400ish pages are what I would describe as a mix of flashbacks, ramblings, attempts to make sense of her ‘insignificant’ life and her relationships, whether that be with truck drivers in bathrooms, her daughter or her parents.

So unique in style from anything I’ve previously read, the story is one continuous paragraph without sentences and full punctuation. This took a bit of getting used to but kept me, as the reader, suspended in a sense of urgency.

I would describe this book as a raw, character driven exploration of the self. Violeta clearly lacks self-esteem but at the same time is accepting of all parts of herself. Many parts were quite difficult to read when discussions abuse and bullying.

The strongest theme that comes through is the relationship between mother and daughter. Violeta’s daughter, referred to throughout as the Angel, lives in contrast to what Violeta views herself to be, and also lives as a stark reminder to the twisted nature of her becoming.

The story is beautifully written and translated. I really enjoyed the incredibly descriptive nature of the writing. I think some of it probably went over my head and I would benefit from a re-read but nonetheless I really enjoyed this as a change of pace from my usual read.

The novel begins with the protagonist at the confluence between this world and the next. This seemingly ordinary beginning takes a riveting turn, more so owing to the fierce and eccentric nature of our main character.

This is one of the most difficult books I have ever had to read, because it deals with the horrendously neglected fatal effects of fatphobic bullying and abuse. Violeta abhors her body but this emotion emerges with a trigger, she hides away for she knows she will be mocked and in order to cope she hates (or pretends to) herself. She calls her body hair, her enemies and is at war everyday selling body-wax solutions.

What drew me most to the book is the writer's excellence that can be experienced at the sentence level. Metaphors are atmospheric and the transition from one line of thought to another is seamless and yet positively differentiable. 

The prose is deliciously lyrical, the form is fleetingly modern. For example,

tell me a secret
keep me awake
until this night is over

The book also deals with the protagonist's sexuality, something that is often assumed to be either dormant or perverse in fat women. This book is a testament that women are imperfect beings who also happen to be fierce, who also need love to thrive. The book also broaches on important social issues that are at the heart of modern existence like single parenthood, mixed race children, radical difference of political opinion within the family and mental illness.

This book will arouse in you a myriad of emotions, something you did not expect, something that will stay with you a long time.

Read this book for the millions of fat women who convince themselves everyday that they are not enough or that they deserve the hate they're given. Promiscuity as a label is a patriarchal concept which has no place in the 21st century.

Note: This book was provided to me by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Violeta Among the Stars begins violently, crashing into the reader’s consciousness in the middle of a sentence. The narrator of the novel, Violeta, has veered off the motorway while driving in a storm and now, hanging upside down in her crumpled vehicle, begins to contemplate her life as she drifts towards death. Starting with the events of that night and reaching ever deeper into the past, her mind runs through various topics – her job, her relationships, childhood traumas and shattered dreams – endlessly looping back to certain events or phrases and becoming increasingly wild as she slowly slips away. Yet while Violeta’s loosening hold on life is tangible, Cardoso’s grip on her novel certainly is not: every single word has its place here, and the wall of language with which we are met carries a singular emotional weight.

[. . .]

In investigating a seemingly ordinary – not to say insignificant – life in this manner, Cardoso is also able to explore several bigger topics, particularly motherhood and female desire. Violeta’s night-time escapades to lorry parks, where she has sex with unknown men in driver’s cabs or on the dirty floors of toilet blocks, are on one level deeply upsetting, but on the other contain a strange sense of empowerment: Violeta is entirely unapologetic, believing that in acting the part of an uncertain, fearful woman she gains the upper hand. Unsettling on a different level are her thoughts on the family’s maid, though the class distinction and her dismissive attitude seem also to be largely copied from her unfeeling mother. As a piece of social commentary, Violeta Among the Stars is insightful, suggesting that we can never truly know another person or the circumstances that led them to where they are – as, indeed, we may struggle to know ourselves.

As she goes back over the events of her life, Violeta muses on how ‘it is undoubtedly the details that keep us attached to stories’ – a sentiment that Cardoso seems to feel strongly, considering her attachment to motifs that repeat throughout the novel. These phrases, often just a handful of words, are not only anchors for Violeta’s swirling mind, but also for the reader, helping us negotiate a narrative that could easily threaten to become overwhelming. Translator Ángel Gurría-Quintana, who has done a remarkable job of maintaining the rhythm of the text, has largely rendered these into English but kept the very occasional word in Portuguese or French, just one of the many characteristic uses of language that build on one another to create Violeta’s memorable voice.

A veritable torrent of words that unleash on the reader a formidable mind, Violeta Among the Stars is a novel that aches with crushed hopes, everyday cruelty and personal disappointment – but also with boundless love. In looking deep into a mind on the verge of being snuffed out, it somehow manages to be a celebration of life and language: exhilarating, experimental and thoroughly extraordinary.

[Abridged review; full version available on my blog.]

Wow, this was so different. I wasn’t sure at first but I decided to keep going and I’m so glad I did. I don’t know if a lot of people would like this book as it is a little disconcerting but it is so compelling and I read it so very quickly. I really enjoyed this book in the end. My thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for giving me the opportunity to read this book in return for an honest review.

Impressively constructed and strangely compelling, this won't be for everyone. Having crashed her car after a fraught day and too much to drink, Violeta hangs dangling from her seat belt and as she contemplates a drop of rain, her life - at least, her reconstructions of her life - filter through her head.

This is written in true stream-of-consciousness so be prepared for fragmented sentences, swift changes of direction, remembered inserts and a free-flow narrative. Inside Violeta's head is a messy place to be with her troubled family relationships, her vexed connections to her own overflowing body, and her penchant for anonymous sex with lorry drivers. But, gradually, we piece together some of the contributors to who Violeta is and come to understand at least something of this troubled woman.

Cardoso gives Violeta a sardonic sense of humour as she weaves in tales of her 'war' against the 'enemies' (female body hair - she sells wax treatments) and her judgmental take on other people and the world. But, make no mistake, there's a sort of everyday tragedy here too, and the power of the narrative builds relentlessly.

I picked this up at the wrong time when work pressures meant little time for off-duty reading and it ended up taking me (an unprecedented!) week to finish this short-ish book which did it no favours: I'd like to re-read it in more concentrated fashion to get a more intense dose of Violeta.

So a book which impressed me with its technique but which also offers up an oblique view of modern Portugal and its political legacies.

"I am waiting for someone to come and save me, an angel, Ângelo, the lorry driver, the lorry driver’s wife, Denise, the Ukrainian, Betty, Betty’s pale children, the buyers, the second assistant, the clerk, the old man on the golf links, the man in his convertible, the Indians in the restaurant, the bride-to-be with a veil and a cock, the bride-to-be’s friends, Carminho, the blue velvet sofa, the server at the café, the boy with the t-shirt that says smile, someone who has read the messages I left in the service station, something will save me, I cannot remain stuck

c’est fini, c’est fini, ma chérie"

Violeta Among The Stars is translated from the Portuguese by Ángel Gurría-Quintana from the original Os Meus Sentimentos by Dulce Maria Cardoso, and published by that great supporter of translated fiction, Machelose Press.

The novel opens:

"suddenly

I 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, suddenly I stop the position I’m in, head down, hanging by the seatbelt, not uncomfortable, strangely my body does not weigh me down, it must have been a hard crash, I opened my eyes and found myself like this, head down, arms resting on the car’s ceiling, legs dangling, the awkwardness of a ragdoll, eyes fixed, listless, on a drop of water that clings to a vertical shard of glass, I can’t make out the noises around me, I start again, I should have stayed at home, I should have stayed at home,

refrains are so tedious

for some time, seconds, hours, I can do nothing, I must have landed very far from the road, rain beating on the car’s plate metal, wheels spinning in the air, chirp, chirp, crickets, no, no, it can’t be crickets, tick tock, indicators blinking, inside the water drop, only my eyes unable to look away, only my eyes, my car overturned on empty ground, my travel bag tangled in a bush, the waxing products, the free samples for my customers and my account books strewn in the mud, further away a shoe in a distant puddle, the headlamps still on, the rain, the trails of fireflies flitting until they die on the ground, chirp, it cannot be crickets, everywhere splinters of glass shimmering brightly, shards chasing the night away,

I should have stayed at home"

Stylistically, this stream of thought, one continuous sentence broken by a ‘refrain’ (a repeated motif, a recalled or overheard snatch of conversation, a common saying e.g. from the narrator’s mother) continues throughout the novel. It had for me some similarities with Javier Marias as thoughts are returned to and examined, but with a very different sensibility, more emotional than detached, and subject matter.

Our first person narrator Violeta is an obese middle aged Portuguese woman, a travelling saleswoman selling depilatory waxing products, her twin “enemies” body hair (“the enemies poking through my skin, dark and hard hairs conquering my body”), and the rise of competition from an influx of laser clinics from Spain.

"I’m a good salesperson, the best, I always respected my enemies, I fought them openly, the Spanish laser treatment centres have an unfair advantage, I would not be surprised if one of these days the customers from all those Spanish laser clinics found millions of ghosts thirsty for revenge growing back all over their skin, those allegedly permanent solutions are no match for the staying power of my enemies, Denise likes to hear me rant about laser treatment and the Spanish clinics,

I don’t ask her to leave because I find it amusing to listen to her nonsense"

(Denise a customer of hers, and her refrain negating Violeta’s view of their relationship)

Violeta finds herself at the novel’s opening lying, perhaps dying, in the wreckage of her car, having left the road while driving on the night of a severe storm, and while drunk.

As she gazes into the drop of water falling from the shard of glass, she flashes back to the events of that day and indeed her life.

That day Violeta had sold the home of her late parents, to the disapproval of her daughter Dora and then had an assignation with a lorry driver at a service station, this last, we learn bring something of a habit of hers, dating back to her youth when she would go with the boys in the neighbourhood. Dora’s father is unknown to her or Violeta’s parents (who were just relieved the baby was white) although later in the novel clues emerge.

Violeta’s parents were the wrong side of the carnation revolution and found themselves denounced by others as their privileged world crumbled around them, including their seemingly loyal and long-suffering maid, and Ângelo, Violeta’s half sister from a love affair her father had with a poorer woman around the time he married Violeta’s mother. Ângelo is now a (at least in Violeta’s account) unsuccessful entertainer - a clown at children’s parties and a comedian for older audience, his lame jokes greeted by food thrown at him and grumbling respectively - but now sort of part of a dysfunctional family of sorts after the death of his and Violeta’s father.

Violeta’s account sometimes include time slips - recalling a meal the previous day with Ângelo and Dora she also remembers when the restaurant was once the site of a hair salon she visited with her mother - and her imagining conversations she hasn’t heard (such as one between Ângelo and Dora after they hear of her accident) and even lives for people she doesn’t know (people in adverts in the wealth management magazines in the bank where she waits to sign the deeds of transfer for the family home), to which she adds her own refrain:

" where is this all coming from, where do I get the certainty that that’s how it happened"

Overall a very impressively constructed novel and a memorable drawn narrator (although not a book for readers looking for likeable characters). A strong early contender for the 2022 International Booker.

In this strange and meandering tale, translated from the Portuguese, it appears that Violeta, drinking, and driving in an appalling storm, has been involved in a serious car crash. Off the empty road, trapped and hanging by her seatbelt, she will be erratically recapping her life in the immediate, and not so recent, past. Finally rescued, it will appear that she dies in the crash. But the wider story is very much her thoughts. But it is a jumble of images, family, friends, colleagues and life – that in retrospect one has to wonder if how much, or if any of it is true. Throughout the book we get the “immediate” thoughts, but gradually by gradually more and more of her back life is revealed. But can that mean that her possible "truths" of the people around her become more visible, or is that maybe questionable?
A theme that runs through her thoughts is that she has just sold her old family home. This might be in response to her daughter (she is unmarried) planning to leave home. Although she is deeply embedded in the memories of her family she claims not to like the house, but it had become a place of comfort to her daughter who had often visited there as a child. So selling might be regarded as malicious. But this too reflects the ambiguity of her thoughts. Has she really sold the house recently, meaning that she must have held onto it for years, in spite of her vaunted dislike, or is this yet another delusion?
Gradually too the possible stories of her parents will emerge. She lived in a family of great bitterness and obvious discord where a public front was maintained. Her father from a poor farming family and her mother from one of greater wealth and seeming respectability. We are told her father had become a partial recluse after he had been threatened by a crowd in the civil war. He had been identified by somebody as worth of attack, but the family story is that his wife courageously stood the possible attackers down. With time for Violeta it might become clear why he was in this difficulty, an illegitimate son (and a parallel life to his marriage) that would be kept from her as a child. The son and his place in her father’s life, and later hers too, will become an obsession of Violeta.
But her tale as she tells it is one of almost complete discontent, and ultimately contempt for other people. She creates complicated lives for them that have to be fictional. Meanwhile she will be trying to maintain that she is normal, hardworking, not obese, and achieving things. Even the simplest incidents of her past life become long recounting of minutiae. But as the book progresses the reader has to wonder how much is true, how much is delusional, and how much is perhaps an inadequate woman trying to explain away situations in which she is clearly struggling – situations in which she “speaks a completely different language” to other people.
But maybe bizarrely this makes the novel a strangely compelling one, although mightily strange in tenor. It is a unique way of considering the nature of truth as we understand it, but also the deeper truths and memories of family. The latter is something we all have and we surely know that various members see things from different perspectives and regard some things as large, as or more significant than others. But the distance of Violeta from reality and the created ambience of distanced stupor equally asks whether one should believe anything she does say, hint or feel.