In the novel “Vale das Pitangueiras” (Valley of the Pitanga Trees), writer and PhD in Literary Studies Elenice Koziel follows the journey of Natália, a teacher who, upon turning forty, decides to interrupt a life marked by emotional exhaustion, grief, and strained relationships. Seeking refuge at her grandmother’s farm in the countryside, the protagonist begins a process of reconnection with time, her body, and her own roots. With sensitive and evocative writing, the work intertwines memory, belonging, and care to reflect on the invisible marks of the female experience and on the possibility of a new beginning even after the most difficult periods of life.
Natalia decides to end her own life at the age of forty, in a gesture that is both painful and liberating. At what point did you realize that this rupture needed to be the starting point of the story?
The inspiration for the character came from my own experiences and observations of women in my life. I wanted to open the narrative with the moment when the character realizes she needs to stop. It is from this pause that the process of reconnection and transformation that drives the story is born. I realized that the rupture was the only possible beginning when I understood that, for Natália to rediscover herself, she first needed to disintegrate the woman that society expected her to be at forty.
The book addresses a form of female exhaustion that is often invisible, silent, and socially normalized. How was it for you to transform this exhaustion—so collective—into an intimate and literary narrative?
It was a process of giving voice to silence. I tried to transform the invisible weight of daily life into words, so that this weariness would cease to be a solitary burden and become a bridge of empathy. By following Natalia’s thoughts, memories, and silences, the reader enters this inner territory where exhaustion reveals itself as a sign that something needs to be transformed.
The site in “Vale das Pitangueiras” emerges almost as a character, a space for pause and reconstruction. What does this return to the countryside symbolically represent in Natália’s journey—and also in her own trajectory?
The Pitangueiras Valley is a symbolic territory of reunion. For Natália, returning to her grandmother’s farm means escaping the urgency of urban life and entering a space with a different rhythm. For me, this space also has a very personal dimension. I grew up in the interior of Paraná. In my adolescence, my parents sold the farm and we moved to the city, but I carry this desire to return to that place which, deep down, represents a time when life wasn’t so suffocating.
The relationship with the babcia (a term used to refer to the ancestors of the ancestors) is marked by care, memory, and spirituality. What role did older female figures play in building this history, and how do you see care as an inheritance passed down through generations?
My ancestors had a very strong influence on my life and, consequently, on my writing. Babcia was inspired, in particular, by my aunt Sofia who, while still young, was left alone with four small children, living in the countryside, and had to cope with the harshness of life. I have always admired how she and other women in the family transformed pain into a silent strength that kept them fighting. For me, care is the legacy of this struggle that is renewed with each generation.
Throughout the narrative, manual labor and the rhythm of nature help Natália reconnect with herself. Do you believe that, in the contemporary world, we are losing this ability to listen to our bodies and to natural time?
Contemporary life constantly pushes us toward acceleration. We are always connected, producing, always responding to some demand. At this pace, we often lose the ability to perceive our own bodies and the natural cycles of time. In the novel, simple activities like cooking, tending the garden, sewing, and drinking chimarrão (a traditional South American infused drink) become moments of reconnection.
Your academic background is deeply connected to literary studies. What was the process like of moving beyond the rigor of academic language and allowing yourself to write with more emotional and sensitive freedom?
When I finished my doctorate (in 2020, in the midst of the pandemic), I felt a little orphaned. I wanted to continue writing, but to “free myself” from academic texts and explore other territories of language, in a more sensitive and intuitive way. Undoubtedly, my background helped. After all, it was years and years of reading literary texts, the subject of research since my undergraduate degree in Literature, and, in a way, now I wanted to be on the other side: to go from being a literature researcher to a literature producer.
The book discusses scars not as signs of weakness, but as structures that support those who have survived. Was there a personal moment when you also needed to reframe your own scars to move forward?
I believe that all of us, at some point in our lives, need to learn to look at our own scars. In my case, the main scar that needed to be given new meaning was that of grief. I lost my brother in the middle of writing the novel, and the narrative ended up taking a different turn because of the pain of that loss. Writing helped me try to understand (if it’s even possible to understand death) and transform the pain into memory.
Upon finishing this work, what do you feel has also been transformed within you? And what kind of reunion do you hope readers will have with themselves as they journey through this experience with Natália?
Writing Vale das Pitangueiras was also a process of listening and inner reorganization. The narrative speaks of pause and was born from a personal need to pause and reflect on themes such as exhaustion, grief, care, aging, and new beginnings. Literature has this capacity to create spaces of recognition. I hope that, by journeying through this path with the characters, readers will also find moments of identification.
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