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4.04 AVERAGE
4.04 AVERAGE
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
emotional
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
J’ai pas tout compris mais il y avait de très belles phrases et en fait je crois que c’est okay d’apprécier un livre ou une œuvre d’art sans la comprendre vraiment
challenging
reflective
sad
slow-paced
I thought I'd get through this slip of a novella in one sitting, after a long work day. Rather, it took me several days. In part, because it demanded more focus than a brain tired from work could give. But mostly because I kept flitting back over passages just read, turning them over in my mind.
I was going to say this story is dense, but that's not quite right. Despite the layered meaning and the weighty themes, Lispector's prose never feels heavy or sluggish. No. It's scintillating. Like a gem catching the light differently as you turn it over in your hands.
Somehow, she's able to tell an interesting story about the dullest girl. To never let you feel sorry for a pathetic little life. And it's so meta, there's barely any story, it's almost all commentary.
I will be thinking about this for a while, and may return to add later ideas.
I was going to say this story is dense, but that's not quite right. Despite the layered meaning and the weighty themes, Lispector's prose never feels heavy or sluggish. No. It's scintillating. Like a gem catching the light differently as you turn it over in your hands.
Somehow, she's able to tell an interesting story about the dullest girl. To never let you feel sorry for a pathetic little life. And it's so meta, there's barely any story, it's almost all commentary.
I will be thinking about this for a while, and may return to add later ideas.
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This book is all about obsession. We follow a narrator who, after meeting Macabéa, can’t get her out of his head. Throughout the story, he flips between pitying her, mocking her, admiring her, and hating her. It’s a rollercoaster of contradiction.
I’d never read Clarice Lispector before, but my God — her writing is incredible. The way she portrays a woman crushed by society without ever having to spell it out is genius. Macabéa is a functional illiterate, and you feel it through every line — not because the narrator tells you, but because Clarice shows it so subtly and precisely.
All the people around Macabéa either take advantage of her or fake sympathy. Even in the final stretch, a fortune teller pretends to be her friend only to deceive her one last time. Macabéa lives, suffers, and dies as a forgotten figure — and that’s the point. For someone like her, the hour of the star is just one brief, blinding flash... and then it’s over.
What a stunning book. I need to read more of Clarice — immediately.
I’d never read Clarice Lispector before, but my God — her writing is incredible. The way she portrays a woman crushed by society without ever having to spell it out is genius. Macabéa is a functional illiterate, and you feel it through every line — not because the narrator tells you, but because Clarice shows it so subtly and precisely.
All the people around Macabéa either take advantage of her or fake sympathy. Even in the final stretch, a fortune teller pretends to be her friend only to deceive her one last time. Macabéa lives, suffers, and dies as a forgotten figure — and that’s the point. For someone like her, the hour of the star is just one brief, blinding flash... and then it’s over.
What a stunning book. I need to read more of Clarice — immediately.
What can we know about the lives of others? Plenty — we are fortunate enough to be able to make things up. Again I am brought to compare a book to David Foster Wallace, as Lispector offers up a striking exercise in narratorial voice. Establishing the narrator as a Benengeli figure (and specifically a man, and a petite-bourgeois man at that) is of course a rhetorical choice meant to clarify his cruelty, a condescension that manifests as faux-romanticism: in truth he is telling the story not of Macabéa but of his own superiority, of his supposed insight into the lives of those who lack insight into themselves. An incisive work of criticism-as-practice, sharply observed and eminently readable.
Ugh wow dit had ik nodig!! Dit valt onder het beste genre dat er is: boeken met een hoek af (geschreven door vrouwen ofc) - past in het rijtje van Tezer Özlü of Ingeborg Bachmann