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![\"Astra](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/3472703_web1_Eliana-Alvez-Cruz-Author-Photo-Photo-Credit-Astra-House-2025.jpg\")
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Astra House photo<\/p>\n
Eliana Alves Cruz\u2019s first book to be translated into English exposes, from the inside, the charged torsions of the Brazilian versions of class and caste, racism and race.<\/p>\n
The first 15 episodes are in Mabel\u2019s voice. The little girl is Eunice\u2019s daughter; the pair are Black domestics in a rich white Brazilian couple\u2019s apartment in an unnamed big city in the south of Brazil.<\/p>\n
Eunice\u2019s voice narrates the second part of the novel; the third, from which the title derives, is narrated by the series of solitary \u201clittle-rooms\u201d inhabited by domestics \u2014 historically and today. Evoking solitary confinement, \u201cSolit\u00e1ria\u201d signals the sites of isolation of Brazilians like Eunice and Mabel, servants confined to tiny compartments in the rear of opulent apartments.<\/p>\n
That Alves Cruz gives these \u201clittle-rooms\u201d their own narrative power and presence is resonant: in Brazil these spaces are mute witness to generations of suffering \u2014 like that of the woman imprisoned in another apartment since she was 10.<\/p>\n
The tensions in Mabel and Eunice\u2019s family speak to today\u2019s Brazil as to Brazilian history. The father, an expert and loving gardener, drinks too much and eventually is forced to abandon his family. Eunice\u2019s mother lives with her daughter and granddaughter in a little house in the far suburbs, from which they travel hours to the apartment where they work.<\/p>\n
The traditional caste of service people populate their layer of the apartment block: the building superintendent Jurandir and his two boys, Cacau and Jo\u00e3o Pedro, add another turn to the plot as Mabel becomes pregnant as a teenager with Jo\u00e3o Pedro\u2019s baby, while Mabel and Cacau eventually break free from their respective confinements through years of hard study and determination. Jurandir\u2019s sons represent two possible avenues of escape for Mabel \u2014 one, passionate anger and rebellion, the other determination and endurance.<\/p>\n
A further elaboration of plot develops through Ms. Lucia, the rich boss and Tiago, her lawyer husband, who struggle to conceive a child; their hyper-spoiled daughter Camila comes to play a vital part in the second of the novel\u2019s twinned tragedies involving children. (Readers will have to discover these transparent and telling developments for themselves.)<\/p>\n
Meanwhile Ms. Lucia plays her own duplicitous role in helping Mabel abort, later scornfully revealing her complicity to Eunice. That first cover-up anticipates the larger and ultimately unsuccessful attempt of the rich couple at concealment of their family\u2019s role in the novel\u2019s final tragedy.<\/p>\n