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Title: New Portuguese Letters by Maria Isabel Barreno, Maria Teresa Horta, Maria Velho Da Costa, Maria Velho Da Costa, Helen R. Lane, Faith Gillespie, Suzette MacEdo ISBN: 0-930523-98-9 Publisher: Readers Intl Pub. Date: September, 1994 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95

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Average Customer Rating: 4 (1 review)

Rating: 4
Summary: Haunting
Comment: The New Portuguese Letters written by the Three Marias is based on a volume of 17th century letters, supposedly written by a young Portuguese girl, Mariana Alcoforado, whose father placed her in a religious convent when she was sixteen. When she was 25, she had a love affair with a young French officer who, subsequently, abandoned her and returned to his country; he later became a Marshall of France. Her five love letters to him were published in France.

TheThree Marias have written letters between the nun and her former lover. In addition to those, they have created/invented poems, letters, essays to, by, and between a multitude of characters whose lives, directly or indirectly, through the generations have touched Mariana's.

The writing is , by turn, lyrical, haunting, heart-breaking, sensuous, condemning of the male-dominated society and begging to be read. The voices of women are being heard: a daughter who is [seduced] by her father; a mother who rejects the daughter she bears after being impregnated by a man other than her husband; a woman whose husband leaves for the New World and never sends for her; a daughter forced to marry a man she does not love; a dowry-less daughter exiled to a convent and condemned to a celibate life; women who are raped, actually and symbolically, by their husbands.

The letters, essays, poems reflect not just women in the 17th century, not just in Portugal, but today and in countries all over the world. The Three Marias speak for all women who have been or who are silenced... Although I enjoyed the book and recommend it highly, I gave the book a "4" rating because I found the poems difficult to understand.)