Clarice Lispector

Clarice Lispector's Complete Stories, 85 in all, are an epiphany, among the important books of this—or any—year

The Complete Stories

Lindy

I feel like I've finished running a marathon, having read 83 stories spanning an entire writer's life in the matter of two and half weeks. The prose is complex and strange, constantly pushing at the boundaries of intelligibility. If there's a singular thematic throughline, it's the futility of ego. As Lispector writes of another book in "Covert Joy," this is "a thick book, my God, it [is] a book you could live with, eating it, sleeping it" (370).

Volume highlights:
- "Obsession," telling of a struggle to reconcile one's self-perception to the perceptions of others in the context of a romantic relationship
- "Gertrudes Asks for Advice," in which a teenage girl in the throes of existential crisis seeks advice from a famed columnist
- "Love," in which the totality of the breathing world becomes visible to a woman as she is returning with her groceries, only for it to slip away from her in an instant
- "Happy Birthday," in which an extended family gathers to celebrate an elderly relative's birthday, an event neither they nor she care about
- "The Crime of the Mathematics Teacher," in which a man, alone on a plateau at night but for the corpse of a dog, attempts to absolve himself of an unforgivable sin
- "The Fifth Story," a story about storytelling and its masks
- "Covert Joy" & "The First Kiss," begin and end the section of stories that were first published in a volume titled Covert Joy and respectively describe a process through which a girl becomes a woman and a boy becomes a man.
- "Forgiving God," in which a woman contends with a sudden brush with God
- "Dry Sketch of Horses," asking what is horse and what is human
- "Soul Storm," a mass of magic and creation
- "The Sound of Footsteps," about woman and the annoying persistence of sexual desire
- "Pig Latin," although somehow only a few pages long, confronts a number of social beliefs around sexual assault 
- "Brasília," a story of contradictions, of the world seen and unseen both

Alexia Cambaling

After War and Peace, I made Complete Stories by Clarice Lispector (trans. Katrina Dodson) my second big book undertaking. Obviously, it’s not as big as War and Peace but it is daunting in its own way as a complete collection of all of Clarice Lispector’s short stories. It is also my introduction to her work and I’ll definitely be seeking out more after this. Each of Lispector’s short stories is captivating in a different sense. She has a way with words that captures the eccentricities that lies within every human being, the obsessions, the fixations. Most of her characters are women and none of them read the same way. The writing is excellent and with the breadth of stories available, you’ll definitely find at least some you like. Some favorites include: Happy Birthday, The Disasters of Sofia, Remnants of Carnival, A Tale of So Much Love, In Search of Dignity, Miss Algrave, and Brasilia. With her short stories, I realized why there’s the famous quote, “Be careful with Clarice, she’s not literature. She’s witchcraft.”

Dani

I didn't know what to expect, and at the same time I did, a little bit. The expected was okay, the unexpected was great. It's quite refreshing picking up a book so different from what I'm used to.
I really like some of Clarice's stories, and the most experimental ones are... interesting, outstanding for the context. 
I do recommend her work but maybe take it one book at a time, the Complete Stories might be a little too much too soon, or just take it easy.

The publication of Clarice Lispector's Collected Stories, eighty-five in all, is a major literary event. Now, for the first time in English, are all the stories that made her a Brazilian legend: from teenagers coming into awareness of their sexual and artistic powers to humdrum housewives whose lives are shattered by unexpected epiphanies to old people who don't know what to do with themselves. Lispector's stories take us through their lives - and ours. From one of the greatest modern writers, these 85 stories, gathered from the nine collections published during her lifetime, follow Clarice Lispector throughout her life.

The Complete Stories

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