Abstract
For her fifth novel, Eliete - An Ordinary Life, Portuguese writer Dulce Maria Cardoso chose a plot that is more common for a TV series or a lifestyle magazine than for a novel: a middle-aged real estate agent, dissatisfied with her current life, creates an account on Tinder and begins dating. It wouldn't be so remarkable if, of course, she wasn't married, had two grown daughters, and didn't end up spending most of her virtual meetings in a cheap motel off the highway.
The author does not consider infidelity itself to be such a problem as the communication void of pictograms that has appeared with smart phones and social networks. One of the forms of distorted communication is, for example, the intergenerational discussion of four women, which seems almost impossible - and not only because of the different living conditions in different phases of Portuguese history.