The courtesy of the house

Winner of the Sesc and National Library awards in the Short Story category, Marta Barcellos makes her debut in the novel with A Cortesia da Casa , a plot set in a luxury spa in the mountains of Rio de Janeiro.

Denise, a middle-aged woman staying at the Montana Spa in the mountainous region of Rio de Janeiro, struggles to fulfill her social role and maintain a superficiality. Amidst a routine that normalizes calorie counting, plastic surgery, and scatological situations, she tries to conform to the standards set by an elite that seems as lost as she is.

The narrative is delicate and the character's observations and annoyances are gradually revealed in the details: the problems with her husband, her son, her daughter-in-law and her friend Lena, whose busy and bohemian routine she accompanies on occasional dates, and whose interest in Denise's life hides a secret.

With a work of concealment in language and without slipping into caricature, A Cortedade da Casa uses the artificial environment of the spa to depict the midlife crisis of a woman who suddenly feels discarded—by her husband Vicente, her son Bruno, and the job market—and begins to experience episodes of binge eating. The reader accesses the gaps in the narratives the character creates for herself and glimpses the helplessness and emptiness left by the absence of the men she cared for.

In this thought-provoking novel, Marta Barcellos offers, with beauty, humor, and irony, a commentary on frivolity and a subtle and ironic critique of class about a woman in crisis.

"The author's witty narrative provokes ambiguous feelings in us, the readers: we are both amused and displeased by Denise's frivolity, while simultaneously understanding the social and patriarchal mechanisms that forged her. We root for her to break out of her shell and reveal herself, or discover herself. Or free herself. A moving effect masterfully constructed by Marta Barcellos." – Claudia Lage