Brazilian literature has long been characterized by linguistic and stylistic innovation and the construction of an ambiguous narrative viewpoint, characteristics derived from the authors' awareness of the fluid, shifting relationship between language and reality (cf. Payne and Fitz 5). Contemporary Brazilian women writers are part of this tradition, and have produced, in the last twenty or twenty-five years, a significant body of work, outstanding for its discourse experimen? tation and inventiveness in plot.1 This includes the use of elements of the fantasy novel, a term that describes the novel of the fantastic, the gothic, the grotesque, the fairy tale, the Utopian novel, etc. Sonia Coutinho (O jogo de If?, 1980, O caso Alice, 1991), Marilene Felinto (As mulheres de Tijucopapo, 1982), and M?rcia Denser (A ponte das estrelas, 1990) are a few examples of this tendency. This study will focus on the use of the fantastic, the gothic and the grotesque in two novels by two of the most prominent Brazilian female writers today: Lya Luft's O quarto fechado (1984), and Lygia Fagundes Telles 's As horas nuas (1989).