Customer Reviews

Woman Between Mirrors (Texas Pan American Series)

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Woman Between Mirrors
"The truth is not the truth"
Reviewed by Ezzat Goushegir, DePaul University, Chicago
Woman Between Mirrors by Helena Parente Cunha the Brazilian novelist, feels as close and intimate to me as if I were the author of this book, virtually writing it in my own rhythm and style, with my own words, voice and breath.
Although it derives from feminist schools of thought of the 80s and 90s, I believe this is a novel for all times. Like Clarice Lispector, the prominent Brazilian writer, Cunha is in search of identity. Cunha not only emphasizes Brazilian national identity and its historical and mythological relation to Africa, but also in the discovery of "self", the physical space of the body and the exploration of womanhood.
The novel consists of a long first person monologue narrated by a house wife from the upper middle class family. Using a psychoanalytical perspective, she explores how the process of sexual and intellectual awakening, transforms her into an independent, liberated woman and an author.
One of the devices of this novel is the protagonist's relationship to the author who is separated from herself. She constantly scrutinizes this "woman who writes me" often in a critical dynamic way including analyzing her as "a slave to liberation". This labyrinthine relationship goes beyond the conventional relationship between the author and her character. In fact the narrator tries to convince us that the protagonist is more perceptive than the author, and she revolts the author's one dimensionality. "She's as much a prisoner as I am. Being free by needing to undermine standards is the same as being a slave. She is a slave to liberation. My submission liberates me." (p. 9)
The narrator then explains that "Each thing has many sides, each person has many voices...and that way we know the truth is not the truth." (p. 15)
At the end of the this multi-layered, multi-dimensional, multi-disciplinary novel, a thunderstorm shatters the mirror into a thousand pieces and the narrator sees her entire face in a shard of glass. Her face is as complex and blurred as the Jorge Luis Borges' character in "The Aleph" and Fernando Pessoa's multiple personalities.
This enigmatic novel succeeds at revealing the complexity and ambiguity of the human mind.

I was assigned to read "Woman Between Mirrors" for my Latin American History class at Winona State University in Winona, Minnesota. I do not have a background in literature, but I do consider myself to be an avid reader. I found this book to be confusing, misleading and a backward step in the feminist movement. The woman's portrayal of herself in this book is confusing to the reader and is very difficult to read. The book takes an unexpected turn in the middle, but when it is completed, the reader is not sure if this event even took place. There are three different parts to the one character in the book and it takes twenty pages out of this short novel to even figure that aspect of the book out. Maybe something was lost in the translation to English, but I was being generous with the two stars. The only positive thing that this book does is to show the different and complicting aspects to a woman and the contradicting feelings that a woman can have about one situation. My instructor told me that this book was suppose to portray an Afro-Brazilian woman. From reading this book, I have no idea where that came from. I would not suggest reading this book unless you want a hard-to-read book about nothing in particular.