Empty wardrobes
(Book)

Translation of: Os armários vazios.

Originally published in Portuguese in 1966.

For ten years Dora has ritualistically mourned her husband's death. Her beloved husband, a "Christ" so principled he rejected any ambition whatsoever as a construct of a corrupt society, succeeded only in leaving Dora and their daughter with nothing. When her mother-in-law reveals a shattering secret about their marriage one night, Dora's narrative of her own life is destroyed. Three generations of women--Dora, her daughter, and mother-in-law--must navigate a world that has been shaped by the blundering men off in the distance, figures barely present who nonetheless define the lives of the women they would call mother, wife, or lover.

"Carvalho's tale of fading grief, new life, and quiet devastation lays bare the limitations of patriarchal love and the ambient savageries perched and waiting in its every crevice"--,Provided by publisher.