Reviews
masterful. what it is to love and be loved.
a book set in motion of the act of loving itself. not just to person but one own soul and life in its fullness
Most beautiful romance book I've ever read.
love isn’t just about feeling, it’s about letting yourself feel it fully. that’s the hardest part, and that’s exactly what this book captures so well.
lispector’s writing is sharp, intimate, and unfiltered. she takes the most ordinary moments, especially in a woman’s life and makes them feel profound. there’s deep insight, raw uncertainty, and an almost instinctive understanding of human emotions, yet she never pretends to have all the answers.
i find this book so compelling because of how it explores love, not just romance, but the act of allowing myself to be loved. it doesn’t try to give clear answers, just this quiet unraveling of emotions, uncertainty, and self-discovery. the hesitation, the doubt, the raw honesty, it all feels so real.
it’s not just about relationships with others, but about what it means to be human. to trust, to accept, to believe that love is something we are meant to feel.
some books end. others stay. this book is the latter. not just a story i read, but a presence i carried, a quiet companion who gently sat beside me through my own silences and uncertainties.
i’ve spent so much time in lóri’s world that closing the book feels like saying goodbye to someone i’ve come to know. lóri isn’t just a character to me. her fragile, hesitant, tender, and brave all at once. its rare to meet a fictional character who feels like a mirror, someone who doesn’t just exist within the story, but stays in your mind; showing up in your quiet moments, your worries, and your longing for something you can’t even name.
lóri isnt a typical main hero who saves the world or suddenly finds all the answers to her problems. instead, she sits with her feelings and lets them stay beside her. she questions to be love or loved, freedom, life, and quiet moments that show up between those thoughts. and in this sitting, i found her the most beautiful. because i’ve been there too, wondering if the quiet means nothing is there, or if maybe the quiet is actually alive.
i’ve written letters to her, many times, even though she’s fictional character (i know im crazy for this) but somehow writing to her felt like writing to myself. like i could say the things i couldn’t always say out loud. and through those letters, i realized how much of me was reflected back in her.
lispector doesn’t write to explain life to you, she writes to feel it with you. her language is liquid, shapeless until it touches you, and then suddenly, they become something personal and real. through lóri, she shows the pain of wanting to belong without losing who you are, of wanting to be loved without feeling trapped, of hoping for a love that doesn’t as you to become smaller just to fit.
this book was less a story and more a dialogue between me and lóri, between lóri and herself, between silence and sound, between the fear of being known and the desire to be seen. there were a times i paused to continue, not because i dont want to or tired or bored, but because a sentence surprised me so much, it felt like lispector reached through time and space to hold my hand.
when i reached the last page, i felt a quiet sadness like the feeling i get after my bestfriend leaves, knowing you might not see them for a long long long time, but they’ve left a part of themselves with me. lóri has become a part of how i see the world and understand myself.
this isn’t a book i can recommend casually, because it’s not for everyone. its for who understand the heavy feeling of things left unsaid, who have sat along and wondered if anyone else feels the same. its for those who know that not every question needs an answer because sometimes you just need someone to sit with you in wondering.
i also want to thank my friend, jess, who recommended this book to me. without her recommendation, i might never have met lóri, and would have missed one of the most tender and honest reading experiences of my life.
lóri, thank you for your company. lispector, thank you for giving her to me. and jess, thank you for your recommendation that lead me to something that understands me this deeply.
i’m grateful for you, and for lóri.
i love and fw romantic classical fiction a lot dawg (I LOVE CLARICE LISPECTOR SO MUCH SHES SO ME RIP CLARICE YOU WOULD'VE LOVED ME) :((
second read… felt this a bit more.
personal library, bought from books are magic brooklyn heights
such a beautiful read.
Broke my fiction reading slump (been more drawn to non-fiction these days) because of this book and I have no regrets. This is my first Lispector and it quite literally changed my life and left me at a loss for words. I don't know how to fully encapsulate Lispector's ethereal, groundbreaking prose except to say that it took my breath away but even that would be an understatement. I am so excited to read more of her stuff.
Five stars would be an understatement. This book is the embodiment of "a perfect book at a perfect time", for I came to struggle on the quest of loving and being loved by someone, and how deserving I am to hold the title of happiness, that which is, to love, and being loved. But does happiness only really fathom such way? Does happiness really meant, putting a huge importance on finding someone, and pouring every bits of ourselves into them? Do we, in order to truly love, and be loved, must first find one's way to exist; find our own solitude and there forth, sharing it with one another? Why so, when human life is so very superficial, do we need love; and how does it complete us, when we are flawed, in our own way, and the mere possibility of ruining others, with our own flawed self, how do we find peace in loving, peace in moments of joy, when we never thought we deserve them? Lispector has always been incredibly alluring, eloquent, spiritually profound in her prose, for how she elaborated feelings or petty aspects of life as a human, sensually grounded yet incredibly congenial. This slim but intense volume is definitely much more straightforward than her other works. The plot, such as it is, involves a man and a woman—Lori and the aptly named Ulisses—who love each other but can’t be together. At least, not yet, until they find their own meaning of existing; of living; of being human. I can't help but to bear such a strong resemblance on Lori, of how she; in many instances, wonder about why she is living; existing, of how to let herself being flooded by joy, and how she manage to find peace with gradual acceptance of it. Lori knew, that her happiness is Ulisses, a wise professor of philosophy who, is waiting, and always being there for Lori, for her to find freedom within herself, in order for them to love each other. Maybe, in a sense, I desired to find the Ulisses to my Lori. Of how he is able to patiently, and relentlessly extend his hands to Lori, even when Lori struggled to find her way of existing. I always find myself, unable to give in to someone in fear of being the act of burden to them, and how I would ruin; taint them with my incredibly flawed self, and this book told me that well, that's what being human is all about; learning and accepting the gradual moments of joy even though we hardly understand it, just existing, even of how absurd it is; and to love, after we find the way to be worthy of life itself. Indeed, the prize of becoming a human; a few private moments between ourselves and the universe, that is the struggle toward love, is presented as an apprenticeship, and we will always remain as apprentices, for we will constantly learn, feel, and struggle, and that's on being human. This book will always hold a special place in my heart.
This was such an interesting book to me. I have tabs peppering this thing. As I see it, this is a reaction to romance novels, so maybe post-romance (does that exist?). Rather than having the conflict be communication or some other flaw, the conflict is the inciting incident. A man tells a woman that she needs to do some internal growth in order for them to be together, and so the conflict is entirely within her as she earnestly undergoes that spiritual journey. Both are, to their own eyes anyway, subjectively beautiful and men and women have fallen for them—yet no lasting romantic attraction is something they have encountered. They both have flaws that are stark; the man more so, I think. And is much older. But they are both in an apprenticeship. One which is primarily the process of being fully themselves, loving themselves as they are, while being apart. They can both be insufferable at times, but their endeavour, at least to me, is one of the most interesting things I’ve encountered. It gives beauty and substance to the mundanity of life, and the every day person. Something I generally like a lot in my fiction. Everyone is interesting with the right craft applied. Reinforcing this is the stream-of-consciousness prose and the unconventional dialogue. It’s almost like what you’d usually get as dialogue, in terms of the refinement of what a character is saying… only it’s translated or run through a filter so it’s the core idea being conveyed. I don’t even know for sure that 100% of the time it’s not just subliminal communication, or something like it. Similar to how thoughts are on the page, with stray wisdom and epiphanies arrived at and then lost like a dream, they often tell one another what is at the heart of their being without, I feel, noticing. So they do say something, as chronicled by our protagonist, but what she recounts is the romanticized, recontextualized information, possibly. This also felt really conducive to a queer reading. I don’t look for ace representation in things I consume, because generally very few things have it, and it’s pointless to look. But jumping out at me were several passages where it seemed very overt that the protagonist is demiromantic, and/or on the ace spectrum. How she thinks about love and romance versus sex are compartmentalized exactly right, and it kind of helps further understand, if the male counterpart is also ace spectrum, what that magnetic pull is. Like recognizing like, accepting and compartmentalizing certain aspects of their feelings and inner selves. I don’t know. It makes a heck of a lot of sense to me. If anyone else has thoughts on that, I’d love to know.
Sheila Heti’s afterword correctly summarizes: consuming this book is an entirely spiritual experience. As the character Lóri begins the book as one woman and ends as another, the reader, too, will undergo a similar experience.
Highlights
With me you’ll speak your whole soul, even in silence. One day I’ll speak my whole soul, and we won’t run dry because the soul is infinite. And besides we have two bodies which will be a joyful, mute, deep pleasure for us.
she was putting someone else on top of herself
How to explain that, coming from as far away inside herself as she had, being half-alive was already a victory.
i feel this lately and surviving means i already won
Look how she walks with the natural pride of someone who has a body. You, besides hiding what is called the soul, are ashamed to have a body.
You can quickly think of the day that passed. Or of the friends that passed and were lost forever. But it’s no use to try to avoid it: the silence is there. Even the worst suffering, that of lost friendship, is just an attempt to escape. For if at first the silence seems to expect a reply — what an urge, Ulisses, to be called and to respond; soon you discover that it demands nothing of you, perhaps only your silence.
She was hanging on ferociously to her hunt for a way of walking, for the right steps. But the shortcut with refreshing shade and light flashing between the trees, the shortcut where she'd finally be herself, that she'd only felt in a certain intermediate moment of the prayer. But she was also aware of something: when she was most ready, she'd move from herself to other people, her path was other people. When she could fully feel the other she'd be safe and think: here is my port of arrival. But first she needed to reach herself, first she needed to reach the world.
"Not understanding" was so vast that it surpassed all understanding—understanding was always limited. But not-understanding had no frontiers and led to the infnite, to the God. It wasn't a not-understanding like that of a simpleton. What was good was having an intelligence and not understanding. It was a strange blessing like that of having madness without being crazy. It was a gentle disinterest toward the so-called matters of the intellect, a sweetness of stupidity.
But sometimes the unbearable anxiety would come: she wanted to understand enough so that she'd at least become more aware of everything she didn't understand. Though deep down she didnt want to comprehend. She knew it was impossible and every time she had thought she'd understood herself it was because she'd understood wrongly. Understanding was always a mistake—she preferred the largesse, so wide and free and without mistakes, of not-understanding. It was bad, but at least you knew you were in the full human condition.
Yet sometimes she'd guess right. There were cosmic streaks that substituted for understanding.
Her immeasurable soul. For she was the World. And yet she was living so little. This was one of the sources of her humility and forced acceptance, and also kept her weak in the face of any possibility of action.
Lóri herself had a kind of dread of going, as if she could go too far—in what direction? Which was making it hard to go. She kept holding back a little as if holding the reins of a horse that could gallop off and take her God knows where. She was saving herself. Why and for what? What was she sparing her- self for? There was a certain fear of her own capability, large or small, maybe because she didnt know her own limits. Were the limits of a human divine? They were. But it kept seeming to her that, as a woman sometimes saved herself untouched in order to give herself one day to love, she might want to die still completely whole so that eternity would have all of her.
“With me you'll speak your whole soul, even in silence. One day I’ll speak my whole soul, and we wont run dry because the soul is infinite. And besides we have two bodies which will be a joyful, mute, deep pleasure for us.”
“It was then that Ulisses had turned up in her life. He, who had been interested in Lóri only because of desire, was now seeming to see how out of reach she was. And more than that: not just out of reach for him but for herself and for the world. She was living off a tightness in her chest: life.”
“Lóri put on perfume and this was one of her imitations of the world, she who was trying so hard to learn life with perfume, somehow she was intensifying what she was and that's why she couldn't use perfumes that contradicted her: perfuming herself was an instinctive knowledge, come from millennia of apparently passive women learning, and, like any art, it demanded a minimum of self- knowledge … because it was hers, it was her, since for Lóri putting on perfume was a secret and almost religious act.”
In the past she didn't go to the beach out of idleness and also because she didn't like crowds. Now she went without any laziness at five in the morning, when the smell of the still unused sea would make her dizzy with joy. The tangy salt air -maresia, a feminine word, though for Lóri the salty smell was masculine. Shed go at five in the morning because that was the hour of the sea's great solitude. Sometimes on the side walk shed pass a man walking his dog, no one else. How to explain that the sea was her maternal cradle but that the smell was all masculine? Maybe it was the perfect fusion. Moreover, at dawn, the caps of the waves looked much whiter.
SALT AIR…
- Say that again, Lóri.
- I no longer know what it was.
-But I do, I'll always know. You literally said: one day ie will be the world with its haughty impersonality versus my extreme individuality as a person but well be one and the same.
- Yes.
Lóri was softly astounded. So this was happiness. At first she felt empty. Then her eyes moistened: it was happiness, but how mortal I am, how the love for the world transcends me. Love for mortal life was killing her sweetly, bit by bit. And what can I do: What can I do with happiness? What can I do with this strange and piercing peace, which is already starting to hurt me like an anguish, like a great silence of spaces? To whom can I give my happiness, which is already starting to scratch me a bit and scares me. No, I don't want to be happy. I prefer mediocrity. Ah, thousands of people dont have the nerve to linger a while longer in this unknown thing which is feling happy and they prefer mediocrity. She said goodbye to Ulisses almost in a run: he was the danger.
We haven't accepted what we don't understand because we don't want to look stupid. We've hoarded things and reassurances because we dont have each other. We dont have any joy that hasn't already been caralogued. We've built cathedrals, and stayed outside because the cathedrals we ourselves built, were afraid they're traps. We havent surendered to ourselves, because that would be the start of a long life and were afraid of that. Weve avoided falling to our knees in front of the first one of us who says, out of love: you're afraid.
But she didn't fear the moon because she was more lunar than solar and could see with wide-open eyes in the dark dawns the sinister moon in the sky. So she bathed all over in the lunar rays, as there are others who sunbathed. And was becoming profoundly limpid.
For a fraction of a second the person saw herself as an object to be looked at, which could be called narcissism but, already influenced by Ulisses, she'd call: pleasure in being, To find in the external figure the echoes of the internal figure: ah, so it's true I wasn't just imagining it: I exist.
Was protection a presence? If she were protected by Ulisses even more than she already was, she'd immediately aim for the maximum: to be so protected that she wouldn't fear being free: since from her Aights of freedom she'd always have somewhere to return.
“—One day it will be the world with its haughty impersonality versus my extreme individuality as a person but we’ll one and the same.”