Reviews - Tähden hetki | The StoryGraph

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2.7k reviews for:

Tähden hetki

Clarice Lispector

4.04 AVERAGE

jpattee13's review against another edition

5.0

challenging dark emotional funny inspiring mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: N/A

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

chugga's review against another edition

1.5

slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

luisantelune's review against another edition

3.0

dark medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

My first ever Clarice Lispector.

I found the book just okay—not something I loved or disliked. It follows Macabéa, a poor young woman from Brazil’s rural Northeast who moves to Rio de Janeiro, with the story narrated by Rodrigo S.M., a self-conscious and philosophical writer.

The Hour of the Star explores themes of poverty, identity, fate, and the invisibility of marginalized people. Lispector’s writing takes some getting used to—it’s verbose and can be a bit confusing, especially for those unfamiliar with her style.

What I appreciated most about this novel were the foreword and afterword by the translator, Benjamin Moser and Lispector’s son, Paulo Gurgel Valente. A Passion for the Void by Colm Tóibín provided valuable insight into Lispector’s background and the inspirations behind her work, and I really enjoyed reading it. I might check out Tóibín’s books in the future.

The Afterwords gave me a deeper understanding of the novel, shedding light on Lispector’s motivations, political stance, and the realities she sought to depict. It truly changed how I viewed the book. Moser did an outstanding job with the translation—the English version preserves Lispector’s distinct style so well that it feels as if it were originally written in English.

A Passion for the Void by Colm Tóibin

page 8

she's the most non-literary writer I've ever known, and 'never cracks a book' as we used to say. She's never read anything that I can discover — I think she's a 'self-taught' writer, like a primitive painter."

page 9

The idea of Lispector as fleeting, oddly unreliable, complicated, someone who could vanish, as Bishop would have it, is essential to her work and her reputation.

What Moser calls "her inflexible individuality" made Lispector a subject of fascination to those around her, and to readers, but there was always a sense that she was deeply mystified by the world, and uncomfortable with life itself, as indeed with narrative. In October 1977, shortly before her death, she published the novella The Hour of the Star in which all her talents and eccentricities merged and folded in a densely self-conscious narrative dealing with the difficulty and odd pleasures of storytelling and then proceeding, when it could, to tell the story of Macabéa, a woman who, Lispector told an interviewer, "was so poor that all she ate were hot dogs." But she made clear that this was "not the story, though. The story is about a crushed innocence, about an anonymous misery."

The narrative moves from a set of broad strokes about character and scene, with throwaway moments and casual statements which sum up and analyze, to aphorisms about life and death and the mystery of time and God. It moves from a deep awareness about the tragedy of being alive to a sly allowance for the fact that existence is a comedy.

page 12

Lispector, on the other hand, as she came to the end of her life, wrote as though her life was beginning, with a sense of a need to stir and shake narrative itself to see where it might take her, as the bewildered and original writer that she was, and us, her bewildered and excited readers.

The Hour of the Star

page 18

How do I know everything that's about to come and that I myself still don't know, since I never lived it?

page 20

I'm not going to adorn the word because if I touch the girl's bread the bread will turn to gold — and the girl (she's nineteen) the girl wouldn't be able to bite it, dying of hunger. So I have to speak simply to capture her delicate and vague existence.

page 36

no matter how bad her situation, she didn't want to be deprived of herself, she wanted to be herself.

Only once did she ask a tragic question: who am I? It frightened her so much that she completely stopped thinking.

page 40

Yes, it's true, I sometimes think that I'm not me, I seem to belong to a distant galaxy because l'm so strange to myself. Is this me? I am frightened to encounter myself.

page 48

Macabéa said: - Good manners are the best inheritance.

page 50

Because this past belonged to both of them and they had forgotten the bitterness of childhood because childhood, once it's over, is always bittersweet and even makes you nostalgic.

My Mother, between Reality and Fiction by Paulo Gurgel Valente

page 91

There is no right to punish. There is only the power to punish. A man is punished for his crime because the State is stronger than he; the great crime of War is not punished, because beyond the individual there is mankind, and beyond mankind there is nothing else at all.

page 93

My books are not much concerned with facts themselves because, for me, the important thing isn't facts in and of themselves, but the impact of those facts on the individ-ual. That's what really matters. That's what I do. And I think that, in this sense, I also make books that are engaged with man and his reality, because reality is not a purely external phenomenon.

Translator’s Afterword by Benjamin Moser

page 99

Her translators would do well to recall this point. Because no matter how odd Clarice Lispector's prose sounds in translation, it sounds just as unusual in the original.

"The foreignness of her prose is one of the most overwhelming facts of our literary history, and even of the history of our language," the poet Lêdo Ivo wrote.

Content Warnings

jackroche's review against another edition

challenging reflective sad medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

It’s not necessarily a rare occurrence given the authors I tend to read, but there’s a unique thrill to trying out a new author and it being immediately apparent they’re operating on another level of genius. It’s a shame I can’t read Portuguese, since I’m sure the effect is only greater in its original language. I’m a sucker for meta-literature of course, and have a soft spot for holy fools, but at the end of the day I have never seen anyone who writes like Clarice Lispector and I’d venture to guess it’s because no one else does.

hyxh's review against another edition

3.0

clarice eu não entendi

akallabeth's review against another edition

2.25

challenging dark reflective sad slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

As long as I have questions and no answers I'll keep writing.

the edition of this book i read comes with a note from translator benjamin moser, which i found interesting; he notes that the fragmented syntax, weird word choices, and unconventional grammar of lispector's work arenot a consequence of translation, but so much present in the original text that native portuguese speakers often struggle with it. i've been known to like an odd and deliberately confusing tale, but i fear this one was past my limits.

as much as it is about poor, wretched macabéa, the story is about the man telling it to us, rodrigo s.m. a much-higher-than expected proportion of pagetime is spent on his philosophizing about the nature and art of writing, and also.. misery and... existence? i struggled to pin his narration down and squeeze meaning out of it, and eventually gave up. once he starts the tale of macabéa proper it's a bit easier to parse, with occasional poignant moments but - only a little easier.

in his note moser says: "[the language] has a kind of crepuscular beauty that, even when not entirely intelligible intellectually, creates in the reader an emotional—even tactile—sensation". i fear i got stuck at the lack of intellectual intelligibility and never got hit by the emotional sensation.

not for me, but i'm glad i gave it a try. i may revisit lispector one day, but it won't be any day soon.

lucidalumina's review against another edition

1.5

reflective medium-paced

this was my first book of march. i'd reserved this months ago on libby and when the loan finally came i was so excited. i can't remember the last time i was this disappointed. i just found it really boring and it didn't make me feel anything other than occasional slight amusement (which isn't exactly a rave review). usually if i don't enjoy one out of character/plot/writing style, i still have the other two things to fall back on, so it's not often that i give out ratings this low (at least in my opinion anyway). in this case, none of them did anything for me.

i guess it's a good thing that i spent half of a morning reading it and didn't have to endure it any longer. it hasn't left any other impression on me. i'm sure i'm being harsh, as the writing style is clearly something that a lot of other people enjoy. usually, though, i can understand why someone else might like something that i don't. with this book, however, i really can't tell the appeal. at least i can cross her off my reading bucket list now.