Reviews
Clarice Lispector has absolutely no concern for the rules of genre, form, even language. What a weird, haunting read this was.
metamorphosis for girls…
There are a lot of words in this book and I think you need to find which ones call to you
hypnotic. definitely weird but so unique in its voice and lyricism
beautiful, beautiful. beautiful
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.
No one writes a mental breakdown like Clarice Lispector.
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.
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...
filing this under “cockroachs which caused unexpected existential dread” right next to metamorphosis also in love with clarice lispector
4,5
Excellent book with a ton of philosophical depth. Incredibly hard to parse, but worth the time necessary to understand what is being said.
Highlights
The whole most unreachable part of my soul and which does not belong to me—is the one that touches my border with whatever is no longer I, and to which I give myself. All my anguish has been this unsurpassable and excessively close closeness. I am more whatever within me is not.
And that's when the hand I was holding abandoned me. No, no. I am the one who pulled my hand away because now I must go alone.
If I manage to return from the kingdom of life I shall take your hand again, and kiss it gratefully because it waited for me, and waited for my path to go by, and for me to return thin, ravenous and humble: hungry only for the little, hungry only for the less.
Because, sitting and unmoving there, I had started wanting to live my own remoteness as the only way of living my present. And that, which is apparently innocent, that was once again a pleasure that resembled a horrendous and cosmic delight.
To relive it, I let go of your hand.
I'll save you from this terror in which, for the time being, I need you. What mercy on you now, you whom I grabbed. You innocently gave me your hand, and because I was holding it I had the courage to submerge myself. But don't try to understand me, just keep me company. I know your hand would drop me, if it knew.
How can I repay you? At least use me too, use me at least like a dark tunnel—and when you've crossed my darkness you'l find yourself on the other side with yourself. You might not find yourself with me, I don't know if I'll cross over, but with yourself. At least you're not alone, as I was yesterday, and yesterday I was only praying to at least get out of there alive. And nor just alive—the way that primarily monstrous roach was just alive—but organizedly alive like a person.
In order for us to have, all we are missing is to need. Needing is always the supreme moment. As the most daring joy between a man and a woman comes when the greatness of needing is such that we feel in agony and fright: without you I could not live.
How I hate the light of the sun that reveals everything, reveals even the possible.
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.
When living comes to pass, one wonders: but was that it? And the answer is: that is not only it, that is exactly it.
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.
I did not have the courage to stop being a promise, and I was promising myself, like an adult who lacks the courage to see she is already an adult and keeps promising herself maturity.