Name: The Passion According to G.H.
Rating: 4.02 (50 reviews)
ISBN: 9780816617128

Clarice Lispector

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

The Passion According to G.H.

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.”

Clarice te amo. Clarice eleva a palavra a um lugar metafisico onde a o estado de vigília encontra o mundo dos sonhos. É nesse lugar que eu me sinto lendo Clarice.

João Bicalho

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

Patricia K

cockroach white matter yummm

personal copy

Benjamin Moser

Idra Novey

“there’s a bad taste to the disorder of living.”

- a book about the self, and the selves we find within us and within others. the disgusting qualities — and the beautiful ones — about ourselves that must be observed, accepted, and cherished

- this is a big question (perception, identity, the “self”) that clarice loves to yap about, which makes an apprenticeship a perfect follow-up read. takes the same topics and twists them into the rooms of happiness and romance and desire

- this has been my favorite book in the world for about a year now which has come with its own unique challenges. any time i try to bring it up in conversation with friends i sound like an absolute freak. like of all books to become my favorite why is it the one where a woman stares at a roach for 100 pages

- clarice lispector is a hypnotist: once you fall under her spell she’s incredibly difficult to shrug off. she sticks with you every day, like an echo that follows your own voice. clarice is often described by critics as “mystical” and “singular”, neither of which even begin to cover what it’s like to read her prose for the first time

- whenever i see anyone talk about this book, their focus is usually on the narrator’s obsession with the void, and nothingness, and spiraling into one’s self. while this is certainly one of the key points of the novel and one that’s executed beautifully, i’m saddened by the lack of attention this book gets on how it analyzes shame, and fear, and also one’s acceptance of that shame / fear. this is the aspect of the passion according to g.h. that has been most impactful to me, and something i find very beautiful about clarice lispector’s novels: many of her narrators have something “wrong” with them, or something that happened to them, that isn’t described in vivid detail but is at the core of each protagonist

- this shame is apparent even from the very first paragraph: 

“i don’t know what to do with what i lived, i’m afraid of that profound disorder.”

- it would take a reread or two to have a more well thought out take, but there’s definitely a discussion worth having re: the correlation between the narrator’s obsession with the “void” and her ongoing battle with shame and acceptance

- reading the first few pages of this novel felt exactly like what falling in love has felt like throughout my life. the writing and narration is at a level of beauty that’s instantly overwhelming and near impossible to accurately describe. if soulmates do exist, this book is mine

smile??

- “there’s a bad taste to the disorder of living.” (p.20)

- cockroach x human enemies to lovers

- a book about the self, and the selves we find within us and within others. the disgusting qualities — and the beautiful ones — about ourselves that must be observed, accepted, and cherished

- this is a big question (perception, identity, the “self”) that clarice loves to yap about, which makes an apprenticeship a perfect follow-up read. takes the same topics and twists them into the rooms of happiness and romance and desire

- this has been my favorite book in the world for about a year now which has come with its own unique challenges. any time i try to bring it up in conversation with friends i sound like an absolute freak. like of all books to become my favorite why is it the one where a woman stares at a roach for 100 pages

- clarice lispector is a hypnotist: once you fall under her spell she’s incredibly difficult to shrug off. she sticks with you every day, like an echo that follows your own voice. clarice is often described by critics as “mystical” and “singular”, neither of which even begin to cover what it’s like to read her prose for the first time

- whenever i see anyone talk about this book, their focus is usually on the narrator’s obsession with the void, and nothingness, and spiraling into one’s self. while this is certainly one of the key points of the novel and one that’s executed beautifully, i’m saddened by the lack of attention this book gets on how it analyzes shame, and fear, and also one’s acceptance of that shame / fear. this is the aspect of the passion according to g.h. that has been most impactful to me, and something i find very beautiful about clarice lispector’s novels: many of her narrators have something “wrong” with them, or something that happened to them, that isn’t described in vivid detail but is at the core of each protagonist

- this shame is apparent even from the very first paragraph: “i don’t know what to do with what i lived, i’m afraid of that profound disorder.” (p.3)

- it would take a reread or two to have a more well thought out take, but there’s definitely a discussion worth having re: the correlation between the narrator’s obsession with the “void” and her ongoing battle with shame and acceptance

- reading the first few pages of this novel felt exactly like what falling in love has felt like throughout my life. the writing and narration is at a level of beauty that’s instantly overwhelming and near impossible to accurately describe. if soulmates do exist, this book is mine

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.



The passion according to G.H.

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.

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...

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.

The Passion According to G.H.

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