3.5 rounded up. Loved the representation and learning about an unfamiliar place/time/political setting. ( )

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. ( )

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. ( )

I'm not even sure I can write a review that does justice to the brilliance of this book, but I'll do my best. Cantoras – a word which means ”female singers”, but is also older slang for same-sex attracted women – tells the story of five lesbian women living under the Uruguayan dictatorship. Wanting to escape the suffocating surveillance of the city, the women go out to a remote town on the Atlantic coast – Cabo Polonio, where they can be their true selves amidst the waves, rocks and sand dunes.

The characters are all really strong and gripping, forming an excellent ensemble cast. From the beginning, we have Romina, a left-wing Jew who's been arrested and tortured for past involvement in communist activity; Flaca, a third-generation butcher who broke Romina's heart by hooking up with someone else while Romina was imprisoned; Anita “La Venus”, a frustrated housewife and Flaca's new lover; the quietly enigmatic Melena; and the youngest of them all, sixteen-year-old Paz. As the novel unfolds over a number of years, you become swept up in the stories of these women's lives and loves. There are victories, and there are awful tragedies, with the book as a whole concluding in an uplifting if bittersweet kind of way.

I really enjoyed how, even when the characters came in conflict with each other, all their perspectives came across as equally understandable and sympathetic. You can see why Anita would leave Flaca for the exciting, vibrant singer Ariella, but you can also feel Flaca's heartbreak at being left. Similarly, when Romina ends her passionless relationship with Melena for the Paraguayan artist Diana, you can understand that too… and although that results in tragedy for Melena, it's hard to agree with Flaca that Romina made the wrong decision for herself, you know? It's also wonderful to see how their friendships endure and mature over time, that their bonds run much deeper than whatever fallings-out they have in the short term.

But along with reading about these wonderful characters, reading Cantoras also has you reading about Uruguay, and an extremely dark, violent period in its history. The fear of “el proceso”, the torture meted out against left-wing opponents of the regime, is palpable in this book, as is the rage and indignation of characters like Romina who've endured it. In this Cantoras shares something in common with de Robertis' early books, and especially Perla, which talked about the cruelty of the Argentine dictatorship on the other side of the Río de la Plata. There's a part where soldiers descend on Cabo Polonio and take over the lighthouse, and you can really feel the women's frustration at having their “safe space” taken away from them.

But Cantoras also makes the point that it wasn't just the dictatorship grinding gay people down; it was much of traditional Uruguayan society, under the influence of the Catholic church and patriarchal value systems. There's a grim flashback to a gay conversion clinic in Buenos Aires, and there are also many references to the “esposas”, the handcuffs, which supposedly bound women to the role society demanded of them. Girls having to clean up after their brothers, so their brothers could enjoy the free time; how even the communists had women thanklessly doing all the food prep and cleaning; how women were expected to find husbands, and how profoundly weird you'd be – to the point of attracting suspicion from the regime – if you opted not to marry. But this, too, changes over the course of the book. By the last chapter, same-sex marriage is legal in Uruguay, Paz has long been running a gay bar in Montevideo, and Cabo Polonio has become a tourist attraction for those interested in Uruguay's gay history. The women do joke a bit about how “women getting married” is a concept that seemed an absurdity in their youth, and wistfully lament how the next generation think the word cantoras is amusingly quaint, seeing as they can now openly describe themselves as lesbianas or bisexuales. They're wistful, but overall they have to be pleased that young women who love women don't know the fear that they used to.

So, to cut a long story short: read this book!! Great characters, an interesting time and place to be set in, Carolina de Robertis’ standard beautiful writing, and a pageturningly brisk pace. ( )

"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. ( )