The Hour of the Star: 100th Anniversary Edition
Reviews
the first clarice i read and it falls mostly on short story or prose category. i adore macabéa and her pure soul. i wish the world and any city is gentler on women.
How I loved this book. I read it while traveling in London and Paris and it was a perfect, transient read. Definitely not a linear story, but with enough foundation to understand the purpose of it all. Writing is beautiful, cheeky, erratic, honest.
Lispector may be my new favorite author—need to read more from her. Wouldn’t necessarily suggest to everyone, but I felt very connected to her style of writing.
Highlights
There is no right to punish. There is only the power to punish.
Quote from Lispector in Afterword by her son
I don’t need to pity God. Or do I?
—dusk which is the hour of no one.
Why don't clouds fall, since every thing else does? Because gravity is less than the strength of the air that keeps them up there. Clever, right? Yes, but one day they fall as rain. That is my revenge.
She was laughing because she forgot how to cry…Sadness was a luxury.
But I dont know what's inside my name.
Actually even the worst childhood is always enchanted, how awful.
But her aunt had taught her that eggs were bad for the liver. So obediently got sick, feeling pains on her left side opposite the liver.
Puberty came late because even weeds long for the sun.
The narrator is so mean lol
Before her birth was she an idea? Before her birth was she dead? And after her birth she would die? What a thin slice of watermelon.
Meanwhile the clouds are white and the sky is all blue. Why so much God. Why not a little for men.
I forgot to mention that for the time being I read nothing for fear of polluting the simplicity of my language with luxuries…Or am I not a writer? Actually I'm more of an actor be cause with only one way to punctuate, I juggle with intonation and force another's breathing to accompany my texXt.
Existing isn't logical.
we live exclusively in the present because it is always eternally today and tomorrow will be a today, eternity is the state of things at this very moment.
who am I creates a need. And how can you satisty that need? Those who wonder are incomplete.
Who hasnt ever wondered: am l a monster or is this what it means to be a person.
I know splendid acdjectives, meaty nouns, and verbs so slender that they travel sharp through the air about to go into action, since words are actions, dont you agree?
…I’ll try contrary to my normal habits to write a story with a beginning, middle and grand finale" followed by silence and falling rain.