Half Life

Nadal Prize 2017

During the summer of 1950, five teenage girls at a convent school play truth-or-dare together for the last time– the garment game, as they call it. Two of them, the Viñó twins, are about to set forth on a new life, far away from boarding school. It’s a special occasion and they know it, but they can’t imagine that a cruel promise will wind up marking their lives forever. The girls lose sight of each other and take different roads: Marta becomes a celebrated cook book author, Olga loses thirty kilos, Nina finds a mysterious new boyfriend, Lola gets pregnant at forty-five and loses her husband, and Júlia becomes the first female member of congress in the newborn Spanish democracy.

After thirty-one years without seeing each other, they meet one night to have dinner in Marta’s new restaurant, Half-Life. There, between one dish and the next, one drink and the next, they will resume their game of truth-or-dare. Each one has to submit to a question from the others and can’t refuse to answer. Their responses will bring to light secrets from their past and present that will weave together in surprising ways, until finally, Julia tells her own story. She is the one who paid the highest price that last night they saw each other, thirty-one years ago, and she is the only one who can close the circle.

Through five female protagonists, Care Santos portrays an entire generation of women who were the first to be able to decide what would become of their future. To do it, they had to set aside their rigid, conservative upbringing, which didn’t prepare them for the lives they wanted to lead.