Featured Interview With Teresa Vale
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I was born in Mozambique in the sixties and lived there until I was twelve, but the revolution and regime change in Portugal that led to Mozambican independence, as well as the civil unrest that followed, forced me and my family to leave Africa for good. I’ve lived in Lisbon, Portugal, with my family, ever since.
I pursued an executive career in the financial area but have always loved to write. For a few years now I’ve run the blog The Many Stories of a Woman. At this point in my life I have many stories to tell – stories lived and shared… And all these memories of places I love, music that moves me, books that have inspired me. These are a few of the reasons I began writing.
I love going to the beach and spending time with my sons and my friends. And, like most Portuguese, I would be entirely unable to exist without my cup of espresso!
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
My love of books reaches far into my earliest memories, with Granny and Mom reading bedtime stories to me. Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid” was a huge favorite. As soon as I was able to read and write I began my attempts at storytelling and journaling, even tried to draw comics. In my mid-teens, other concerns took precedence: mostly juggling the demands of a social life and the pressures of school work and all the expectations around it. Later on came a marriage, a career, and children, which all proved extremely time-consuming. Only in my fifties did I resume the habit of writing. I tentatively began a memoir which then became my first novel. At the same time, I started blogging, publishing small, fictionalized vignettes about real life, about struggles and victories shared by women I knew or admired, and of course my own.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
I would only mention a few. Carlos Ruiz Zafón, Emily Brontë, Barbara Erskine, Juliet Marillier, Yrsa Sigurdardottir, Joanne Harris… regarding genres, I would say historical fiction and non-fiction, fantasy and nordic thrillers.
All the authors I admire have influenced and motivated me in some way, but life itself, with all its nuance and complexity has proved the greatest inspiration behind every word that ends up on the page.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
I have recently published my first book, “Love Secrets Lies”.
Teresa, the protagonist, is a young woman born in Africa, where she had begun to dream of love, and felt her heart racing for the first time. As a colonial dictatorship falls in the cold, distant land of Portugal, Teresa’s country gains independence. Danger mounts, and Teresa’s family are forced to flee Mozambique, danger champing at their heels.
Her childhood paradise is gone. She plunges into a wintry landscape of wan faces and gray apartment blocks. On the first day of school she wears green sneakers to school and her classmates jeer. Teresa feels out of place, and realizes she must adapt to a new, alien environment.
But even here romance can thrive. Girls her age share her fancies and expectations. First, Teresa sings the praises of her imaginary boyfriend, Fernando, the tall basketball player she left behind in Mozambique, who is too busy to write to her.
But fantasies fall away. From party to party Teresa makes new friends and learns the new taboos that surround her while her grandparents scrutinize her life, imposing rules and fears she finds unfair and outdated. She’s not supposed to go anywhere without adult supervision. Heavens forbid Teresa’s grandparents even suspect she dreams of romance!
One after another come the Princes Uncharming, the Knights of Broken Armor: Mendonça the Field Test, Rui the Indecisive, Paulo the Almost-Perfect and Diogo, the Riding Coach, a man with soul ablaze, whose flames Teresa is ill-equipped to extinguish.
Each one of them asks for more than she can give, demanding her freedom, pieces of her being. Time and again Teresa must decide whether to surrender — to grandparents, friends, boyfriends — or say “No”, regardless of the personal cost.
From tropical Mozambique to drab, 1970s Lisbon, from the golden beaches of Durban to five-star holidays in verdant, mountainous Madeira, and even the Moroccan Kasbah, Teresa makes mistakes, stumbles and falls, and picks herself up again.
She tries to forge her own path in a country that struggles to emerge from fear and taboo, evade her grandparents’ unrelenting surveillance, and negotiate the terms of her involvement with the boys that come into her orbit. That’s not always easy, and sometimes her insecurity gets in the way, exacting a heavy toll. “Love Secrets Lies” is not a daydream about teenage crushes; it is the story of a woman in the making.
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