Especially at the end, I found it to be quite triggering, despite knowing what was ahead of me while reading, so please do take care of yourselves.

Warto zauważyć - jak już przy morzu jesteśmy - że bohaterowie “Lubiewa” swoją tajną przystań znajdują nad morzem.

But by the half way point I could no longer ignore that the lovely warmth I was feeling for the characters was too often generated by cliched, sappy writing.

I absolutely loved getting to know all five of the women and seeing their relationships with themselves, with each other, and those outside their group change and morph as the story went on, and I got so attached to them all. How does each woman’s relationship with her parents affect the ways in which she understands and interacts with both the dictatorship and her own identities? Just in the last week I've picked up and begun a half dozen books or so of various types and genres but none could hold my attention- and that's nothing on the books but on me! How do you deal with the reality that the horrors recounted here are not pure fiction, they existed within the lifetimes of those alive today and for some are still occurring? But when the author is Carolina de Robertis – the author of the outstanding book Perla – and the women represent any one of us who yearn for a feeling of safety, home and family, the book cries out to be read.Written in stream of consciousness narrative, Cantoras flows perfectly, weaving between the present and the past, and from person to person.

It’s a code name for women who love women and I couldn’t stop myself from smiling every time this word was mentioned. The essence of dictatorship is that no matter where you are or how ordinary you seem, you’re in a cage. 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.

For a full review of the story, including content warnings, please read my first review on the paperback version. And don’t even get me started on the metaphors and symbolism, which can be devoured and analyzed for hours. Znajdują dom na odludnym wybrzeżu, w “strefie, gdzie nikt nas nie może znaleźć”, jak mówi jedna z nich. 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. It was lonely out there, he remarked, glancing at them sideways, smiling to bare his remaining teeth, hinting, though he stopped short of asking any questions about what they were doing, why they were traveling to this of all places, just the five of them, without a man, and it was just as well because they wouldn't have had a decent answer.