Violeta among the stars / Dulce Maria Cardoso ; translated from the Portuguese by Ángel Gurría-Quintana.

First published as Os meus sentimentos by Tinta da China, Lisbon, in 2005.

Translated from the Portuguese.

"Violeta is driving along a lonely stretch of late-night motorway, in the midst of a fearsome storm. When her tired eyes close for just a second, her car veers off the road, rolls down a muddy embankment, over and over, and comes to rest on an empty stretch of sodden ground. And as she lies amid the wreckage of her car, suspended between this world and the next, Violeta's life will quite literally flash before her eyes... Scenes from her past overlap with what happened right before the accident: her upbringing with her distant, critical mother; her father's mysterious double-life; her troubled relationship with her daughter; her life on the road as she drives between waxing product-selling appointments with breaks at motorway service stations, the abuse from other travellers mocking her size, the alcohol, the risky encounters with lorry drivers on filthy public toilet floors..."--Publisher.