'There is no doubting the authenticity of Carvalho's vision and the originality and severity of her voice.' --Joyce Carol Oates, The New York Review of Books For ten years Dora has ritualistically mourned her husband's death, a pointless ritual that forced her to rely on support from old friends and acquaintances. 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. Narrated through the gritted teeth of an acquaintance, Empty Wardrobes--Maria Judite de Carvalho's cutting
