“At the end of each of these short stories we discover that life—our own life—was not exactly where we thought it was. […] Teolinda climbs the stairs of everyday banality to reach the dark chamber of being. […] These are fourteen stories that plunge us into far more than fourteen worlds. For these stories cross the common ground of solitude and despair to arrive at the singular uncommonness of disquiet. And that is the best one can expect from fiction: that it makes us travel to that place that is at once near and distant, fervent and obscure, which we hide beneath the social veil of identity.”

Inês Pedrosa, Expresso

“The art of Teolinda achieves the supreme feat of giving voice to an inner world that has the density of televised reality (the same commonplaces, the same values, the same logic), while simultaneously allowing the other side to emerge—the dark side, glimpsed in the subtext, in dreams, in the grain of the voice, in small details that the titles of the stories bring to the fore (The Oranges, Still Life with Gurnard’s Head), becoming the illuminating (ordering) element of the experience narrated.”

Linda Santos Costa, Público

What Teolinda writes can be read, first of all, in one breath, with the authentic dedication of someone who lets themselves be carried away by the music. Everyone is invited to enter her books; Teolinda always takes care to polish her sentences to the highest common denominator of light... because the poetic art of refinement is a very strong element in her work. Her books, therefore, have a wide and luminous entrance door – and a labyrinth with no exit doors. Teolinda works with the inner chaos of human nature, demanding something much more difficult from the reader than culture and erudition: she demands that fragile and bloody thing called the soul, or, if you prefer, innocence, because she has the talent to show us every shade of the most intimate night of every being.

Inês Pedrosa, LER Magazine

“And yet, despite the deliberate clarity or immediate simplicity of the oral narrative of these tales, which often hold surprises in store for us, the element of surprise found in the best short stories, there lies all the complexity of life and of each fleeting soul that it shows us, or fleetingly shines through in the interstices of the writing.”

URBANO TAVARES RODRIGUES

Grande Prémio de Conto Camilo Castelo Branco, 2002

Histórias de ver e andar

Histórias de ver e andar foi o nome dado pelos árabes às narrativas de viagem, em épocas de descobrir mundos. Mas não é necessário ir longe para mudar de horizonte: o desconhecido mora ao lado, e também dentro da nossa porta. Reconhecê-lo – ou não – depende do modo de ver. E do modo de andar.