“Never again shall I..” “From now on I’ll…” “I shall…” “I’ll always have…” (pg. 34). I miss the childlike naivety of knowing everything. While this paragraph seems to be the narrator reflecting on her life, it can also be a manifestation of the young girl determined to be with a man who is majorly, inappropriately, […]
There is much to unpack in this novella. First of all, the narrator is a spectacle; who is he? And how has he come to know the fate of Macabea? He portrays himself as a god in this universe, one that cannot exactly change the fate of his characters, but one that can control how we see it. We see…
First, I found that the writing style of this book was interesting. Macabea’s story is told through Rodrigo S.M., a narrator created by the author, Clarice Lispector. I think I would have preferred Lispector directly telling Macabea’s story, rather tha…
First, I found that the writing style of this book was interesting. Macabea’s story is told through Rodrigo S.M., a narrator created by the author, Clarice Lispector. I think I would have preferred Lispector directly telling Macabea’s story, rather tha…
First thought on this book was omg it’s only 100 pages. Two pages in… these are going to be the longest 100 pages of writing I’ve ever read. But I made my roommate read a page and she said she liked it so maybe I’m uncultured. It’s making my head hurt. Wow, I just finished […]
I don’t think I’ve ever read a book quite like The Hour of the Star. It’s not just the story itself that feels different, it’s the way it’s told. Half the time I forgot about the plot because Rodrigo, the narrator, keeps interrupting to talk about writing, about poverty, about whether he even has the […]
In the dedication by the author (actually Clarice Lispector), she wrote: “And—and don’t forget that the structure of the atom cannot be seen but is nonetheless known.” This poetic sentence seems to demonstrate a theme of the book where the narrator attempts to capture the unseen and unexperienced. “And my duty, however artlessly, to reveal […]
Macabéa, ridiculed, bullied, deemed irrelevant. She “wasn’t an idiot but she had the pure happiness of idiots” (60). She “got up early in order to have more time to do nothing” (26). She “didn’t know what she was just as a dog doesn’t know it’s dog” (19). She was “a hair in the soup [that] […]
Clarice Lispector, The Hour of the Star
A conversation with Sonia Roncador
