Eliete: A Normal Life

by Dulce Maria Cardoso

*Longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award*

Eliete is forty (-something)
Eliete has been married to Jorge for twenty years
Eliete has an average career as an average estate agent
Eliete has a completely normal life
Eliete has reached breaking-point

Eliete is stuck in both a dead-end job, and a dead-end marriage. She's never had many grand dreams or ambitions, but now she is starting to wonder if life might have passed her by, and if it's too late to do anything about it.

So, Eliete decides to join Tinder. She sets up some fake dating profiles, and embarks on a number of liaisons with various men around suburban Lisbon. Will this ignite her marriage with the spark it so desperately needs? Unlikely. It is the summer of 2016: Jorge has become hooked on Pokémon Go!, there's football on the telly, he's got opinions on Brexit, and he remains completely oblivious to his wife's new exploits.

And then, in the middle of all of this, Eliete's grandmother is diagnosed with dementia, and moves in with them. Alarmingly, her illness seems to have resurfaced some scandalous personal memories, and her unguarded outbursts threaten to reveal explosive, long-buried family secrets. Secrets that suddenly turn Eliete's perception of herself upside-down, as her seemingly normal life collapses around her . . .

Translated from the Portuguese by Ángel Gurría-Quintana

288 pages, Paperback

Published September 22, 2026

About the author

Dulce Maria Cardoso nasceu em Trás-os-Montes, em 1964, na mesma cama onde haviam nascido a mãe e a avó. Tem pena de não se lembrar da viagem no Vera Cruz para Angola. Da infância guarda a sombra generosa de uma mangueira que existia no quintal, o mar e o espaço que lhe moldou a alma. Regressou a Portugal na ponte aérea de 1975. Licenciou-se em Direito pela Faculdade de Direito de Lisboa, escreveu argumentos para cinema, gastou tempo em inutilidades. Também escreveu contos. Tem fé, uma família, um punhado de amigos, o Blui e o Clude. Continua a escrever e a prezar inutilidades. Vive em Lisboa.

Reviews

[Erin · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really wanted to love this book as it is written by a Portuguese author and is set in the town I recently vacationed in. But it’s just very slow & boring and will be donated to my neighborhood little library. Nothing about the characters or the plot grabbed me-I very rarely don’t finish books but I just can’t bring myself to continue this one.

[Annie Long · Rating 5 out of 5]

I know a book is good when I deeply understand a flawed character that makes immoral decisions. Eliete also put to words how I sometimes feel about Alzheimer’s. Much of the book read like poetry which was beautiful and impressive for a translated book.

[Lori Feng · Rating 1 out of 5]

This one was a tough one to follow. The style doesn’t punctuate for dialogue and doesn’t separate out in paragraphs much. I was hoping for thought provoking opinions about mortality and how we should be living lives that we are excited about, but it fell flat.

Thought the characters were shallow and the points lacking. This is a Portuguese published book, and not sure if the author translated to English or if a different translator might have done a poor job