Eye opening, thoughtful, and thought provoking. It helps to have a bit of context about Uruguay but these women transcend country.

A compelling story bringing previously hidden voices to light in a powerful way. Some familiarity with the historical setting allows a reader to have an even richer experience with this one.

This book was hard to read quite honestly. As it should be for the subject matter it covers. It was hard to read about women being kidnapped and raped by the government. But theses women find such a wonderful reprieve from their reality at the beach. Heartbreaking, but a good reminder to those of us in a somewhat stable democracy, that it can all come tumbling down.

This book details an incredible journey of a group of friends during Chile's most brutal dictatorship, chronicling how they face love, discrimination, sexual abuse and friendship
De Robertis has an almost poetic way of writing prose, the words moving rhythmically through the pages. The characters are complex, and at times hateful and petty but you find yourself rooting for thel all the same, because they're so wonderfully human.

A beautiful book about being queer and creating a found family in Uruguay. The book follows the same five women from the Uruguayan dictatorship of the 1970s and early 1980s through the Uruguay's legalization of same sex marriage in 2013. A must-read!

Cantoras was beautiful and heartbreaking - this is one of the best books I've read this year. Set in Uruguay in the 70s (though it spans 30 years), Cantoras follows five friends living under the brutal military dictatorship. This book is beautifully written and the characters fully, wonderful drawn. I loved all five of them: Flaca the leader of the group who runs her father's butcher shop, the beautiful and unhappy housewife La Venus, revolutionary Romina, young Paz, and the quiet, secretive Malena. De Robertis really underscores the fear and suffocation of living under the regime, where you can be imprisoned (or worse) at any time for any reason. But they band together as a family, buying a cottage at the ocean where they can be themselves. I don't want to give away the plot, I'll just say everyone should read this book. Highly, highly recommended.

From review posted at BookBrowse.com: "A sobering exploration of life under authoritarian rule, an unabashed celebration of queer sexuality and a generous work of historical fiction."

Another best read of the year for me! I'll wait diligently for this author next book for sure. I loved everything about it and will edit this feedback in a few hours with a link of my goodreads comment which is very detailed.

This beautifully written book is about five women living in Uruguay, building a found family to live as who they really are, despite dictators, trauma, and fear. Some of the story comes from research the author did on the first LGBTQ+ spaces in Uruguay, not in the city but on the very edge of the country between ocean and sand dunes. The five women in the novel buy a shack that becomes their escape. Each character is unique, they all have individual connections with the other characters, and the time spans 1970s to 2013. I also noticed the tension created by coming out in a time of extreme oppression such as a dictatorship, and the long-term damage that can do. This feels like a story that runs deep for the person writing it as well.

Cantoras is the second book that I’ve read by this author, The Gods of Tango being the first and that one took me two tries to finish because both stories are heavy reading. Cantoras, which is the Spanish word for female singers and old timely slang for Lesbians, is a telling of five women who discover each other the way women do, by a glance, certain body language, or via a few choice remarks. They’re very young and desperate to breathe and be who they imagine themselves to be. But this is the 1970’s in Uruguay and South America during the rule of heinous military dictatorships when ordinary people living ordinary lives were disappeared and tortured in prisons simply for the crime of existing. In addition, being a Latina woman brings about its own “esposas” or handcuffs, the obligatory pathway to being a man’s wife, most certainly not a lover of other women and especially not in those times.

In the suffocating mix of fear and despair, Anita, Flaca, Romina, Malena, and Paz venture to an isolated beach town to steal a bit of freedom. There begins an epic tale of intense friendships that span nearly 40 years through fiery loves and tragedy, intricate layers of character portrayals that wrung out every one of my emotions as they played out in such a natural way that it felt like the stories of real women. I have a weakness for lyrical word craft and nearly every one of her lines is a scorching beauty. 5+ stars for Cantoras.

‘What it might mean, what it could possibly mean, for a woman to look at another woman that way.’

Let me say at once that I loved this sprawling novel, becoming lost in the story, and captured by women in it. Cantoras refers to singers in Spanish, but it is also slang for women who love women.

The novel opens in 1977 when Uruguay is under the rule of a military government and there’s a fear throughout the country – a fear that produces a chilling downtrodden fear in its people. Citizens are arrested for little reason, and, of course, homosexuality is forbidden.

Flaca is responsible for bringing the women together – and the action centres on a deserted, but beautiful part of Uruguay, in a fisherman’s hut on Cabo Polonia. It is here the women retreat to forget about the repression of their lives back in Montevideo. Flaca brings Anita “La Venus” her love with her, as well as Romina and Malena, all cantoras in their early or mid twenties. The teenage Paz in invited to join them, finding sanctuary among these women.

The novel is episodic, moving through the years into the 1980s – as the women make a living, love, fall out of love; and other lovers are brought into their lives and introduced to their home on the Cape. Brutal memories of brief arrest thread through the narrative, while one woman holds out hope that her brother, imprisoned for years, might yet be released one day.

De Robertis masterfully blends a portrait of the political with the personal – the time the novel is set in is a backdrop to the action, and informs it. Personal and political are seamlessly blended. My eyes were opened to what life was like under Uruguay’s military rule – something I had scant knowledge of. When the dictatorship is overthrown, the country exhales a long, quiet yet sad sigh for all that has gone before and De Robertis captures the moment in exquisite detail.

Cabo Polonia remains a backdrop – a wind-swept place of beach and rocks on the Atlantic Ocean that is evocatively described throughout. But equally, the capital city of Montevideo is another presence in the novel with its winding river and boardwalk and its intimate measures.

I was captivated, beguiled and swept along by the women’s stories interspersed with the times described. The novel epilogues in the present time, when the women are older and gay marriage is even now legal. I loved the whimsy of this exchange:

‘Do you ever think about what would happen if you could collapse time and talk to your past self?’

‘Only when I’m very high,’ said Paz.

‘I’m serious! The past versions of us could be here in this very room, listening.’

This magnificent and extremely important novel deftly covers timely present day concerns. With the main action of the novel spanning a decade from the middle of Uruguay's dictatorship to its resolution, the story scuttles back and forth from Montevideo and a small seaside village called Cabo Polonio and follows the lives of five young women as they grow, love and deal with past political and personal issues. Cabo Polonio's role in the novel is key, a place known for its shipwrecks and lighthouse; it is both treacherous and a haven for the women, as well as being the prow supporting them, and keeping them afloat, providing them with the space to be themselves and inculcating them with a deep sense of belonging.

De Robertis has created a colourful and endearing cast of characters,weaving humour, terror, anger, disappointment, eroticism and love into the deep bond connecting them. She juxtaposes the purity of friendship, queer love and camaraderie with a controlling and perverse dictatorship and a discriminating sexist and homophobic society. The tragic unravelling of Malena's story in the chapter 'Broken Water' was heart wrenching, detailing the mostrosity and tyranny of medical intervention in treating queer people in the 1960s, mirroring the terrorism and torture used by the military dictatorship.

A deeply touching novel written in DeRobertis' trademark luscious sensual prose about five women's instinct for survival and the destructive nature of silence in the face of oppression of individual, thought, needs and sexuality. This book will break your heart but ultimately it will also make your heart sing!

With the Uruguayan coup d'etat of 1973 as the backdrop, this novel tells the story of a group of women who come together to form an insular community that promises to protect its members during the worst years of the dictatorship of Uruguay. I was intrigued by the story, as it touches on aspects of history I always find fascinating. But overall, the book is not really for those interested in political history. It's main driver is the examination of how individual lives are affected by matters of state, military conflict, and societal norms. It is also defiantly optimistic about women's lives and the capacity of oppressed to find happiness and community despite the odds.

This is one of the most beautiful books I’ve read in long time. It’s triumphant and devastating, it’s optimistic and heart-breaking, and then manages to cover just about every emotion in between. The story starts off in 1977 in Montevideo, Uruguay, where five women come together to form the beginnings of friendship. A week-long trip to Cabo Polonia, a small village on the coast north of Montevideo, connects them to each other and the village in a way that city living never could.

Of the five women, Flaca is the one to bring them together initially. She’s a butcher’s daughter, used to fairly physical work and not very feminine. She’s quite aware of her sexual orientation but given the era, the patriarchal society and the terror instilled by the recent ascendance of a military dictatorship, being queer is hidden. Romina, in her early 20s like Flaca, is a student and former lover, now best friend, of Flaca’s. Her brother has been detained and jailed for suspected dissidence which means she is marked by association and being discovered a lesbian is as dangerous as being a part of the resistance is.

Flaca’s lover, Anita, figures out a way to leave her husband and unfulfilling marriage for the week. She’s gorgeous, the oldest of the group at 27, and it’s not long before she’s nicknamed ‘La Venus’. Romina brings along a woman she met near the university. She’s sure Malena is lesbian like them, but it’s unspoken. Malena is prim with a bun as ‘tight as her smile’ and says very little. The last of the women is 15-year-old Paz who came into the butchery where Flaca recognised her as a kindred spirit.

The unfolding of each of their stories through the years of political turmoil is powerful and the writing portrays the trauma and joy in a subtle and poetic way. The women are alive on the pages of this novel, even Malena, who shimmers just out of reach in her aloofness. They feel real and the choices they make are human and not always the bravest ones, or the kindest.

The five women are so different from each other in temperament, education, background, family life and age that in the beginning it seems as if the only thing that unites them is their love of women but perhaps, given their circumstances, that's enough. The political landscape is woven into their lives and I found myself being educated with little effort.

I was drawn into their existence, their pasts and their present. I came to care about them and their well-being. Their trials emotionally wrenched me from comfort and their love and friendship gave me hope for them. It’s not a light read but it is engrossing and fast-paced. I’m left with an ache in my chest that, given the choice, I would choose again just to experience the beauty of this novel.

Book received from Netgalley and Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group for an honest review.

This book is fabulous and I learned so much by reading it. This historical fiction is about 5 queer women ( Flaca, Romina, Anita - La Venus, Malenia and Paz) who meet under various situations and decide to travel to this beach called Cabo Polonio. This beach becomes there refuge during a volatile time in Uruguay. Over the course of many years (teens to older adults), they see things change not only in Uruguay but on the beach they claimed as their own in early adulthood. Lovers come and go, but their friendship and the fact that they are queer remains.

With the above said, this book is deep, sad, frightening, loving, happy, infuriating and a host of other emotions. Because this book partially takes place after a coop, there are many horrors that happen but not necessarily given in detail. Some is eluded too and some are explain during the course of the book. If I went into detail, I would be giving up things you need to discover on your own. I truly never anticipated that I would touched like I was reading this. In many ways, it reminds me of the Color Purple. Anyway, I loved this book!