Solitaria by Eliana Alves Cruz, translated by Benjamin Brooks

In the small maid’s quarters of a luxury condo in Brazil, a family drama plays out: Eunice, a single mother who works for the family, carrying out their every wish, finds herself at odds with her daughter Mabel, who also grew up inside this house, and has now escaped its hold – but wants her mother to finally stop being so subservient to this family and tell the truth of a tragic event that they witnessed. Over the years, and through each room in the condo, Eunice and Mabel tell their story from when they moved in, to moving to untangle themselves from their wealthy employers.

Solitaria is a family story, but also one about class and space, telling of who can occupy what space and when, and even dabbling in the idea of “if the walls could speak,” with the little room that makes up their quarters having its own time to speak toward the end of the novel. Mabel interrogates her place in the world, determined to get out and not end up like her mother – and driven by the family’s patriarch saying she’d never become a doctor, gets accepted to medical school and is successful. Eunice, however, has a much less clear-cut relationship with class, and her interactions with her place in their world and society are much more nuanced.

With the novel structure tying itself to a series of rooms in the condo, Solitaria works to make you feel the physicality of the story, with the where each event happened, and the division between the family and Eunice and Mabel shrinking or reaffirming itself as the events unfold. No matter how their lives intersect, there’s always the question of class and race, and it remains charged throughout.

This was a gripping novel with spare prose. Not much time is spent on lyrical turns of phrase or dreams; like the characters, Solitaria is clear about the story and who it’s for, as well as who it’s criticizing. It never comes off as preachy, even though it’s very upfront about the goals of the work.

Eliana Alves dos Santos Cruz (born 1966 in Rio de Janeiro) is a Brazilian journalist and writer. She holds a degree in social communication (Faculdade da Cidade, 1989) and a post-graduate diploma in corporate communication (Candido Mendes University). Former press manager for the Brazilian Aquatic Sports Confederation, she has covered multiple world championships, Pan-Americas and Olympics. Her debut novel, Agua de Barrela, won the Oliveira Silveira Literary Award in 2015; subsequent works include O crime do cais do Valongo (2018), Nada digo de ti… (2020) and the short-story collection A vestida (Jabuti Prize winner). Her most recent novel, Solitaria (2022), addresses themes of race, class and domestic servitude in Brazil.

Benjamin Brooks is a writer, an editor, and a translator of Brazilian literature. He is a Fulbright Scholar, a 2024 Periplus Fellow, and a graduate of the Tin House workshop. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Publisher: Knopf Canada (August 5, 2025)
Paperback: 8″ x 6″ | 240pp
ISBN: 9781039009899

Alison Manley

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Alison Manley has ricocheted between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia for most of her life. Now in Halifax, Nova Scotia, she is the Cataloguing and Metadata Librarian at Saint Mary's University. Her past life includes a long stint as a hospital librarian on the banks of the mighty Miramichi River. She has an honours BA in political science and English from St. Francis Xavier University, and a Master of Library and Information Studies from Dalhousie University. While she's adamant that her love of reading has nothing to do with her work, her ability to consume large amounts of information very quickly sure is helpful. She is often identified by her very red lipstick, and lives with her partner Brett and cat, Toasted Marshmallow.