First of all, the characters in this book were fantastic. I loved the way they interacted with each other and especially the way they spoke to one another. There was a deep humanity in the writing that made me continue reading, made me think about the characters while in my everyday life, and kept me invested.
As someone who researches narratives about women’s reproductive health and how they impact real-life care, I found the story to be deeply important. It is definitely worth reading, especially if you like international and translated fiction.
The beginning section of this book was the best. Mabel was a strong character and had a beautiful story. Her story, especially with her abortion, was raw and emotionally vibrant. I have to admit it made me cry. However, when it first transitioned to Eunice, I found it a bit jarring, as the narration seemed to lose momentum. Finally, when it switched to all the rooms it was simultaneously creative and a bit complicated to follow.
My biggest critique would be that the ending felt rushed. It could have easily had another fifty pages and fleshed out some of the details. But overall, the characters were so good that I am giving it 4 stars.

Great read! First read from this author. This book makes me want to read more from this author. Kept my attention and interest until the end.

This was a beautiful book. The characters where filled with so much depth and emotions. They are well rounded flawed characters that are constantly growing and reading about them was so beautiful. The book is well written and the prose are very nice. It is on the slower side but that just gives you the time to think about what you are reading and to really see the layers of each character

This book is absolutely amazing and I really cannot recommend this highly enough. I will absolutely be recommending it to my audience and will be reading everything she has ever written.

Thank you Astra House and NetGalley for the ARC. I was very very excited to read this book and thankfully it lived up to my expectations. Although it's short, it delves on very deep and complex topics like racism and classicism in Brazil. It's a story that hits close to home since a lot of the power dynamics it explores are also present in other countries in Latin America. Even when I really liked the book, the translation sometimes felt clumsy and unpolished.

"Solitaria" (English version) is a book that tells the story of a Brazilian maid who works for a wealthy family while raising her daughter nearly by herself. Eunice and her daughter Mabel live in a small room in the penthouse, always at the family's beck and call. As Mabel grows up, she witnesses the prejudice and unfair treatment her mother endures, which leads her to rebel against it.

Set in Brazil, the characters and lifestyle are believable and told in a realistic way. The author's writing is engaging and gives readers a look into the lifestyle of the wealthy and those who work as their hired help--maids, cooks, drivers, nannies, etc.

Thank you to NetGalley and Astra House for allowing me to read an early copy of Solitaria: A Novel by Eliana Alvez Cruz translated by Benjamin Brooks. Mabel and her family, Eunice, live in one of the most lavish places in an unnamed city of Brazil. There is one catch, they work there taking care of everyone else, and get to live in a tiny room hidden away from the others. As Mabel grows up her resentment for the hand she has been dealt in life grows as well. I am a huge fan of books that have character development, I don't mind being stuck in one place the entire book with our main characters so long as their stories are engaging and that is precisely what this delivers. I read it in about an hour so it is a VERY quick read and I'd definitely recommend it. This is set to release on August 5th, 2025.

Solitaria tackles quite a lot in its slim 240 pages: classism, racism, multi-generational trauma, upward mobility, and family loyalty.  Told from four different POVs, Cruz weaves together a tale that takes place over more than a decade in a format that feels unputdownable enough to finish in an afternoon.  Most of Mabel’s childhood is spent helping her mother as a rich family's live-in maid and nanny, in a building she’s come to call home even though her status as the help makes it so she never quite belongs.  When tragedy strikes, Mabel and Eunice must navigate the classist nature of Brazilian society in the microcosm of their employer’s neighborhood.  In unflinching prose, Cruz’s astute cultural observations, coupled with a touching portrait of the family you’re born with and the family you choose, is a remarkable feat of creativity and skill.

Many thanks to Astra and netgalley for the advanced copy!

"Imagine skin color and race ⌵
sets us apart on how we should be treated and perceived. Wait, we dont have to, because IT IS HAPPENING.

Read this if you want racial injustice, intergenerational trauma, and the fight for dignity in invisibility and quiet oppression, with writing style like Fernanda Melchor. "

Really loved the writing style, the dramatic moments, and poetic nature of the characters in this story. I felt like this novel could also be written as a beautiful play and the fast-paced structure of the chapter engrossed me after every page turn. Thank you to NetGalley and Astra House for an ARC copy.

Solitaria, a newly translated novel by Afro-Brazilian author Eilana Alvez Cruz. Cruz's book will mark her as one of the most forward-thinking of our generation.

"Mae and I stayed there, in the gilded cage of the Golden Plate Building. We were birds in a luxury habitat, but isn't a golden cage still a cage? Every once in a while, our wings would fly us back home- our little house in the distant suburb, or some other faraway place- but we would always go back to our captivity."

We all know class, wealth, and labor. We all know that some of us are better off than others, simply because they were born into a family that has wealth. They may never pick up a 9-to-5 like most of us; they will never understand the struggle of living paycheck to paycheck. We get stories about that privilege churned out like butter into the book industry. Rich white people are seen struggling in a carefree life. But we rarely see stories about the ones who make that life carefree and easy. Instead of bringing another story to the table about those privileged individuals, which I'm not opposed to, Cruz takes a story that is brushed past by most authors and constructs a beautiful, heart-wrenching life story of a girl growing up in her mother's employer's house. As she grows in this small, grimy space, she learns more about her mother. She befriends her mother's fellow employees. She explores what it means to grow up in an atmosphere where you are not necessarily welcomed or needed, only for your services. She, the daughter, finds out that people are actively trying to bring you down, even if you are already down.

Although there's a huge catastrophe that happens at the beginning of the story, and it's thrown at you from the perspective of the college-age daughter, you get the life story of the daughter. I bring this up because I did not like the violent and unrecognizable shift in perspectives of the mother back to the daughter. It felt like a filler for Cruz to reach a certain word count. But it was not that boring, and it did feel somewhat vital to the story. Other than that flaw, I think it was delivered pretty well.

I love stories about mothers and daughters and stories about class/wealth, so this was right up my alley. I felt for these characters deep in my soul. The writing was great, the pacing worked - nothing not to love about this. It will make you feel as much as think.

solid and effective work with some pretty tight and effective plottings and some greatly effective writing style. 5 stars. tysm for the arc.

Extremely paired down novel set in a high end apartment building and featuring a cast of privileged, wealthy tenants and the staff who work for them. The writing is sparse, the book is slim, and despite all of this, the imagery is so vivid. The book opens and closes with tragedy, and by the end, those who have been manipulated and oppressed decide enough is enough. Another cool aspect of the book is each chapter is titled for a room in the apartment and takes place in said room. I thought this was a creative way to organize a novel.

I really enjoyed this read and rate it 4.5 stars. The story is beautifully written and expertly translated. This book was interesting throughout and shared an interesting perspective through Mable and Eunice. I would definitely recommend. Excellent length.

An exhausting tale of the self complicity and abandonment required to succeed in domestic work. This novel in translation (originally in Portuguese), follows three generations of women. It starts at the end, and a room is the personification of the invisibility required to be seen as a good housekeeper/nanny/personal assistant. I call Solitaria exhausting in that Cruz very successfully and almost surgically dissects the unending neediness of the monied for their staff to be on call and put their lives on hold for them. If you know you know. Solitaria gleams with straightforward prose up until the end of the story, where a more poetic and warm style takes hold. It felt almost as if Cruz was able to bottle the feel of freedom for the family that was no longer ensnared in its employer’s web of nonsense. One of the best I’ve read this year.

I devour books. Yet, it is rare that I find a book that truly captivates me, that holds on and doesn't let go. Solitaria is one of those captivating books. I was spellbound by the microcosm that the author created with the characters of the Golden Plate.

Mabel (daughter), Eunice (mother) are bound to the Golden Plate, a luxury apartment building / condominium in a city in Brazil. Their lives are modest at best; Eunice cares for a very wealthy family on the top floor - assuming the roles of maid and caregiver in exchange for a small salary and room for her and Mabel, called the "littleroom". Mabel and Eunice don't always see eye to eye, especially as Mabel matures and becomes an independent adult. Over the years, we see the interactions that Mabel and Eunice have with the family that Eunice is employed by, as well as how their lives intersect with various occupants of the Golden Plate. When Eunice witnesses a tragic accident at the dawn of a new beginning for many involved, will she be able to take a stand against that which has oppressed her for so long?

I'm a bit speechless. This book completely caught me off guard. I really wasn't expecting to be so captivated by it, but it is a book where the synopsis / premise is deceiving. The story is WAY more than what it is perceived to be. But not just the story, the writing is exquisite. Allow me to back up. Firstly, it does have a tiny bit of a slow start - mostly I think because I felt I needed to acclimate myself to the author's writing style, and the language of how the characters communicated. Once I got deeper into reading it, the story definitely flowed FAST, and I found myself devouring it in a very short amount of time.

The author's writing has straightforward, yet sharp-witted prose - intricately mixing simple conversations and thoughts with captivating morsels of wisdom. The evocative nature of the writing conjured many memories of my own to the surface and I could draw many comparisons - both to Mabel and to Eunice. Part 1 is told by Mabel, Part 2 by Eunice, and then there is a Part 3 told by a third party which I will not divulge. But it was within Mabel's and Eunice's separate views and experiences of some of the same sequence of events where I was really able to relate to each of their characters. This brought to surface some of my own feelings of inadequacy, guilt, and shame that I tend to bury deep.

Specifically, I could identify with the following, and I feel like this book spoke to so many different past and current versions of myself:

As Mabel:
Being the lonely child who just wanted to be seen and heard by her mother. Becoming the wild teenager who was pushed into adulthood before it was her time.

As Eunice:
The mother who wishes more for her child than what she endured with the limited opportunities that were available to her. The self doubt of being uneducated and not good enough (or smart enough) to advance further in life.

The last 20% of this book was what sealed it for me. It was good up until that point, but then it transcended and became something more. I won't spoil it for you, but please please finish this to the end! This is one of those books where the ending propels the book into the cosmos to become a shining star.

There was so much packed into this short book. We experienced themes of social injustice, race, class, colonialism; what the legacy of slavery can mean, and what happens when one is liberated from that legacy. Grief, trauma, addiction, and mental illness make appearances here too. But we also see self-discovery, personal growth and lots of courage, by many of the characters. It is a book that weaves the dark with the light, and is one that can give hope to many.

I read this book in one sitting. That’s right. In one sitting last night, in slightly less than three hours. I simply could not put this book down. My only thought when I finished was: is anyone else reading this, and can we talk about it right now??? 😆

This is the story of Dona Eunice and her daughter Mabel who are live in maids for a very wealthy family in an unnamed city in Brazil. Some time passes and a terrible tragedy/crime strikes involving this family, and Dona Eunice is the only one that can reveal the truth of what really happened.

This story was so much more than just the crime that took place, it was about the effects of colonialism in modern day Brazil, class, and race. It showed the painful but very real depictions of the injustices Dona Eunice and Mabel faced on a day to day basis. It showed the consequences of privilege and the lack of privilege.

This story was told from 3 POVs! The mother, the daughter and the spaces they inhabited. I thought it was brilliant.

Beautiful and direct prose by Eliana. Portuguese is a language with rich sayings and expressions, and I think Benjamin Brooks did a fantastic job bringing those expressions to life in the English language.

Short and highly impactful. I highly recommend this one.

The more I think about it the more it’s a 5 star for me. ⭐️

Thank you for the advanced ARC NetGaley and Astra House! All opinions are my own.

Solitaria Review

Beautiful. Dynamic. Propulsive

I like to go into books pretty blind, so all I knew before starting is that this was a story of Afro-Brazilian mother and daughter who were live-in maids for a wealthy family and that this cover was stunning.
4.5. stars rounded up

So many things worked well for me in Solitaria. The writing style was gripping. I immediately could not put this book down. I love the authors choice to give us the daughter’s POV and then the mother’s to add more nuance and detail. It made the story feel really dynamic. I was also impressed that it never felt repetitive.

Near the end, after the mother’s POV I was taken aback a little by another POV switch and worried it might get a little too contrived, but it all was incredibly moving and well-done.

As the book wraps up, it feels like all of the characters and storylines are handled and concluded beautifully in a way that many literary books don’t do. It could have easily felt a little too neatly done, but it honestly felt a bit refreshing for this novel.

Overall, this is such a thoughtful novel and I am glad I got to experience it. I would highly recommend this to any one interested in familial dynamics (specifically mother-daughter), socio-economic societal commentary, and beautiful writing.

*I received this e-book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review via NetGalley.