Violeta Among the Stars

Desperate and drunk, Violeta overturns her car on a lonely stretch of late-night motorway. As she lies amid the wreckage of her car, suspended between this world and the next, Violeta's life quite literally flashes before her eyes. Scenes from her past overlap with what happened right before the accident: her upbringing with her distant, critical mother; her troubled relationship with her daughter; her life on the road as she drives between waxing product-selling appointments with breaks at motorway service stations, the abuse from other travellers mocking her size, the terrible service station cafes, the alcohol, the risky encounters with lorry drivers on filthy public toilet floors... Suspended in this eternity, Violeta examines the thousand daily grievances that add up to a frustrated, thwarted life. She begins to sink into her past. The Carnation Revolution of 1974, the defining historical moment of her life. Love, passion, sex, and the dreams of adolescence sacrificed to failed relationships. Violeta among the Stars reads like an epic prose poem, weaving memories and feelings as Violeta reflects on her death, her life, her reality and her dreams. An astonishing portrait of a seemingly insignificant life, from one of Portugal's greatest living writers.