Clarice Lispector

The passion according to G.H.

Benjamin Moser

Idra Novey

The Passion According to G.H.

smile

I'm searching, I'm searching. I'm trying to understand. Trying to give what I've lived to someone else and I don't know to whom, but I don't want to keep what I lived. I don't know what to do with what I lived, I'm afraid of that profound disorder.

ㅤrizki

How I hate the light of the sun that reveals everything, reveals even the possible.

A disoriented and confused young woman looks back on her life and her place in the world."

Annie Millman

But if I screamed even once, I might never again be able to stop. If I screamed nobody could ever help me again; whereas, if I never revealed my neediness, I wouldn’t scare anybody by venturing outside the rules. But if they find out, they’ll be scared, we who keep the scream as an inviolable secret. If I raised the alarm at being alive, voiceless and hard they would drag me away since they drag away those who depart the possible world, the exceptional being is dragged away, the screaming being.

All sudden understanding closely resembles an acute incomprehension.

No. All sudden understanding is finally the revelation of an acute incomprehension. Each moment of finding is a getting lost.

Noreen Farsai

Lispector’s most shocking novel. The Passion According to G.H., Clarice Lispector’s mystical novel of 1964, concerns a well-to-do Rio sculptress, G.H., who enters her maid’s room, sees a cockroach crawling out of the wardrobe, and, panicking, slams the door —crushing the cockroach —and then watches it die. At the end of the novel, at the height of a spiritual crisis, comes the most famous and most genuinely shocking scene in Brazilian literature… Lispector wrote that of all her works this novel was the one that “best corresponded to her demands as a writer.”

Brianna Hawkins

One of my favorite creative minds living today is Savannah Brown, a poet who has a couple collections available online as well as many video essays on her YouTube channel. In her most recent video, 

, she references a single paragraph from this book: 

This was, simply put, love at first sight. I looked up the book, read the first page, and immediately wanted to read whatever I could find from Clarice Lispector. I read 

 a couple months ago and loved it, and I have a couple more on my list, but my sights have been set on G.H. since first discovering it. 

Needless to say, the book did not disappoint. The plot is quite easy to introduce: a woman by the name of G.H. walks into her maid's room, sees a cockroach, and crushes it with the closet door. That's the whole book, and the catalyst for the most beautiful existential crisis I've ever encountered in fiction. It's not an exaggeration to say that this is, undoubtably, the best narration of any book I've picked up this year.

However, I do think that there's a lot that I missed while still getting used to Lispector's bending of language. While I put together the surface level events going on in, there are so many reflections from G.H. that I need to return to at a later date. There's 

 much to unpack in this book that I feel unfit to give much critique after just a first read. Despite that, it's perfect. It's everything I wanted.

One of my favorite creative minds living today is Savannah Brown, a poet who has a couple collections available online as well as many video essays on her YouTube channel. In her most recent video, healed my shame! became an orb, she references a single paragraph from this book: THE PASSION ACCORDING TO G.H.. The quote is as follows:

The mystery of human destiny is that we are inevitable, but we have the freedom to carry out or not our inevitability: it depends on us to carry out our inevitable destiny. While inhuman beings, like the roach, carry out their own complete cycle, without ever erring because they do not choose. But it depends on me to freely become whatever I inevitably am. I am the mistress of my inevitability, and, if I decide not to carry it out, I shall remain outside my specifically living nature. But if I carry out my neutral and living nucleus, then, within my species, I shall be being specifically human.

This was, simply put, love at first sight. I looked up the book, read the first page, and immediately wanted to read whatever I could find from Clarice Lispector. I read ÁGUA VIVA a couple months ago and loved it, and I have a couple more on my list, but my sights have been set on G.H. since first discovering it. 

Needless to say, the book did not disappoint. The plot is quite easy to introduce: a woman by the name of G.H. walks into her maid's room, sees a cockroach, and crushes it with the closet door. That's the whole book, and the catalyst for the most beautiful existential crisis I've ever encountered in fiction. It's not an exaggeration to say that this is, undoubtably, the best narration of any book I've picked up this year.

However, I do think that there's a lot that I missed while still getting used to Lispector's bending of language. While I put together the surface level events going on in, there are so many reflections from G.H. that I need to return to at a later date. There's so much to unpack in this book that I feel unfit to give much critique after just a first read. Despite that, it's perfect. It's everything I wanted.

10/10

lispector has absolutely no concern for the rules of genre, form, even language. what a weird, haunting read this was. 

biddy

Ngl, her book was tough to get through, especially when you’re just getting back into reading after a slump. It’s under 200 pages, but it still took me a whole month to finish. I felt like I understood what she was trying to say, but I couldn’t fully grasp all of it. 

The story follows a wealthy sculptor from Rio who enters her ex-maid’s empty room. There, she sees a cockroach crawling out of the wardrobe. She panics and slams the door on it. But instead of moving on, her disturbing fascination with the dying insect becomes a gateway into a deeper, disorienting confrontation with the self, with God, and with the unknowable nature of existence. She begins to question her identity, her place in the universe, and what it even means to be human. Where does identity begin—within, or in how we are seen by others?

And yes, that’s the entire plot. After that, the book just pulls you into her relentless, often dizzying inner monologue as she spirals deeper into a crisis of meaning. It explores how much of being human is shaped by the way we’re perceived by others.

Ngl, her book was tough to get through, especially when you’re just getting back into reading after a slump. It’s under 200 pages, but it still took me a whole month to finish. I felt like I understood what she was trying to say, but I couldn’t fully grasp all of it. 

The story follows a wealthy sculptor from Rio who enters her ex-maid’s empty room. There, she sees a cockroach crawling out of the wardrobe. She panics and slams the door on it. But instead of moving on, her disturbing fascination with the dying insect becomes a gateway into a deeper, disorienting confrontation with the self, with God, and with the unknowable nature of existence. She begins to question her identity, her place in the universe, and what it even means to be human. Where does identity begin—within, or in how we are seen by others?

And yes, that’s the entire plot. After that, the book just pulls you into her relentless, often dizzying inner monologue as she spirals deeper into a crisis of meaning. It explores how much of being human is shaped by the way we’re perceived by others.



We went from "If I had the courage, I'll let myself stay lost." to "With disgust, with despair, with courage, I was giving in."

🍁

hypnotic. definitely weird but so unique in its voice and lyricism 

marlisa

Ryan Greene

This is the most tedious book I’ve ever read. Usually I put books down when they reach a fraction of this tediousness. But there’s something great about it, about what we are beyond the thin layer we call “I”, and it kept me hooked. I kind of wish it hadn’t. It took me forever to finish it. I’d read a page and put it back down for a week. It’s so repetitive, and at times gets so self-indulgent… Maybe for some people it conjures some great trance-like state. I am very happy to be finally free from it.

Martin

Lindy

No one writes a mental breakdown like Clarice Lispector.

Luis Ponce

Desde el principio Lispector nos avisa que el lector correcto de su novela es alguien con un alma ya formada, pues sabe con creces que no cualquiera, en un sentido espiritual y reflexivo, puede ahondar en ella. Pese a que la terminé con mucho placer, maravillado por su estilo poético y un tanto místico, sigo sintiendo que no era el momento adecuado, que aún no soy esa alma predestinada a comprenderla o, como se espera, destinada a aliviarse a medida que pasan los capítulos. Por eso quizá la disfruto bastante, porque sé que en una futura lectura será posible una reconciliación y que, gracias a la puesta en escena de tópicos tan íntimos, pueda querer más (si es que se puede) todos y cada uno de los detalles de la novela, frase por frase. 

A veces también necesito una cucaracha para recordar que sigo vivo.

D D D 

meeeeehhhh 2.5 and I wish I didn't feel that way. 

I saw one of my friends on here (Hi Ian!) sum up this book as "the acceptance that you will fail to live your life and continuing to live it anyways" or something like that. I love that sentiment! a lot of lines in this book were really powerful and I love its premise. 

but the cons were overpowering for me. I went back and forth every chapter finding G.H. relatable/sympathetic and horribly annoying/pathetic. I also found the prose so tedious - there's a popular 1 star review that mimics it so perfectly it made me laugh. Objectively, though, I like the content and wouldn't dissuade anyone from reading this. Just didn't grip me.

I liked the Novey translation a little better than the Sousa. I don't particularly like when novels are overtly doing philosophical musings...

Prashant Prasad

filing this under “cockroachs which caused unexpected existential dread” right next to metamorphosis 

also in love with clarice lispector

Silje Risøy Helgerud

Kieran Wood

Excellent book with a ton of philosophical depth. Incredibly hard to parse, but worth the time necessary to understand what is being said.

Mikee

Nathan

andy f

G.H. Plaag 

G.H., a well-to-do Rio sculptress, enters the room of her maid, which is as clear and white 'as in an insane asylum from which dangerous objects have been removed'. There she sees a cockroach - black, dusty, prehistoric - crawling out of the wardrobe and, panicking, slams the door on it. Her irresistible fascination with the dying insect provokes a spiritual crisis, in which she questions her place in the universe and her very identity, propelling her towards an act of shocking transgression. Clarice Lispector's spare, deeply disturbing yet luminous novel transforms language into something otherworldly, and is one of her most unsettling and compelling works. Translated by Idra Novey With an Introduction by Caetano Veloso 'One of the twentieth century's most mysterious writers.' Orhan Pamuk 'The premier Latin American woman prose writer of this century.' The New York Times Book Review

The passion according to G.H.

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