EMA'S GRANDDAUGHTERS

Winner of the SESC Literature Prize, EMA'S GRANDDAUGHTERS is, ostensibly, a women's novel. But this reduction fails to capture its qualities. It is, indeed, about women—in particular, those who call themselves "granddaughters" of Emme Bovary, Gustave Flaubert's legendary character. A woman who, through her mad attachment to a dream, let reality slip away from her. Mixing memories of the past with everyday tasks—after all, women, chatterboxes that they are, manage several things at once—the story is more feminist, given its agility, its rationality, and the freedom to dispense with the makeup that its author, Eugenia Zerbini, allowed herself.