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aliyatrvd's review against another edition
5.0
i know this doesn’t work for everyone because no plot and format BUT IDC THIS WORKED FOR ME! this book was amazing and ridiculously well written. i’m not kidding when i say i literally devoured it and was underlining EVERYTHING. the language was so so beautiful. i didn’t know its originally written in portuguese until i finished it, i lowkey wish i read it in pt but we move. still amazing, i want to reread it already.
esmeraldnst's review against another edition
challenging
hopeful
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? N/A
5.0
emilyconstance's review
5.0
Lispector just compared me to a wardrobe—and she's so right. When someone looks up the definition of incantation, this book should come up. This has totally altered the way I view writing, existing, living, thinking; being a woman, being human—earthly, celestial. I drunkenly read so many of these passages to my friend a couple of nights ago and kept getting chills. Really wish the original title, "Beyond Thought" was kept because that really captures the essence of what this disordered, disarticulate, elusive, promiscuous—as she would call it—piece of writing is.
/some/ memorable quotes:
"This is life seen by life. I may not have meaning but it is the same lack of meaning that the pulsing vein has."
"Sunday is a day of echoes—hot, dry, and everywhere buzzings of bees and wasps, cries of birds and the distance of paced hammer blows—where do the echoes of Sunday come from? I who loathe Sunday because it's hollow. I, who want the most primary thing because it's the source of generation—I who am all of this, must by fate and tragic destiny only know and taste the echoes of me, because I cannot capture the me itself."
"And madly I take control of the recesses of myself, my ravings suffocate me with so much beauty. I am before, I am almost, I am never."
"I go too far and only then do I exist and in a feverish way. What a fever—will I one day manage to stop living? woe is me, who dies so much. I follow the torturous path of roots bursting the earth. I have a gift for passion, in the bonfire of a dry trunk I contort in the blaze...I'm a concomitant being: I gather in me time past, the present, and the future."
"I, anonymous work of an anonymous reality only justifiable as long as my life lasts."
"I'm restless and harsh and hopeless. Though I have love inside myself. It's just that I don't know how to use love. Sometimes it scratches like barbs."
"Inside each little ant fits a whole world that will escape me if I'm not careful."
"Sometimes I can't stand the strength of inspiration. Then I paint with a heavy heart."
"And each little thing that happens to me I live it here by noting it down. Because I want to feel in my probing hands the living and quivering nerve of the today...is not using words to lose your identity?...I lose the identity of the world inside myself and exist without guarantees. I achieve whatever is achievable but I live the unachievable and the meaning of me and the world and you isn't obvious. It's fantastic..."
"I'm alone. I and my freedom that I don't know how to use. Great responsibility of solitude. Whoever isn't lost doesn't know freedom and love it. As for me, I own up to my solitude that sometimes falls into ecstasy as before fireworks. I am alone and must live a certain intimate glory that in solitude can become pain. And the pain, silence. I keep its name secret. I need secrets in order to live."
"Ah if I had known that it were like that I wouldn't have been born. Ah if I had known I wouldn't have been born. Madness borders the cruellest good sense."
"I am finding myself: it's deadly because only death concludes me. But I bear it until the end. I'll tell you a secret: life is deadly. I'll have to interrupt everything to tell you this: death is the impossible and intangible...It's as if life said the following: and there simply was no following. Only the waiting colon."
/some/ memorable quotes:
"This is life seen by life. I may not have meaning but it is the same lack of meaning that the pulsing vein has."
"Sunday is a day of echoes—hot, dry, and everywhere buzzings of bees and wasps, cries of birds and the distance of paced hammer blows—where do the echoes of Sunday come from? I who loathe Sunday because it's hollow. I, who want the most primary thing because it's the source of generation—I who am all of this, must by fate and tragic destiny only know and taste the echoes of me, because I cannot capture the me itself."
"And madly I take control of the recesses of myself, my ravings suffocate me with so much beauty. I am before, I am almost, I am never."
"I go too far and only then do I exist and in a feverish way. What a fever—will I one day manage to stop living? woe is me, who dies so much. I follow the torturous path of roots bursting the earth. I have a gift for passion, in the bonfire of a dry trunk I contort in the blaze...I'm a concomitant being: I gather in me time past, the present, and the future."
"I, anonymous work of an anonymous reality only justifiable as long as my life lasts."
"I'm restless and harsh and hopeless. Though I have love inside myself. It's just that I don't know how to use love. Sometimes it scratches like barbs."
"Inside each little ant fits a whole world that will escape me if I'm not careful."
"Sometimes I can't stand the strength of inspiration. Then I paint with a heavy heart."
"And each little thing that happens to me I live it here by noting it down. Because I want to feel in my probing hands the living and quivering nerve of the today...is not using words to lose your identity?...I lose the identity of the world inside myself and exist without guarantees. I achieve whatever is achievable but I live the unachievable and the meaning of me and the world and you isn't obvious. It's fantastic..."
"I'm alone. I and my freedom that I don't know how to use. Great responsibility of solitude. Whoever isn't lost doesn't know freedom and love it. As for me, I own up to my solitude that sometimes falls into ecstasy as before fireworks. I am alone and must live a certain intimate glory that in solitude can become pain. And the pain, silence. I keep its name secret. I need secrets in order to live."
"Ah if I had known that it were like that I wouldn't have been born. Ah if I had known I wouldn't have been born. Madness borders the cruellest good sense."
"I am finding myself: it's deadly because only death concludes me. But I bear it until the end. I'll tell you a secret: life is deadly. I'll have to interrupt everything to tell you this: death is the impossible and intangible...It's as if life said the following: and there simply was no following. Only the waiting colon."
pamslibrary's review against another edition
challenging
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
4.0
This was my first Clarice Lispector book and i'm so fascinated by her! As soon as i started reading it enraptured me so much that i could not put it down. I personally felt very deeply about her conception of being and of identity, and especially about words, i identified with a lot of her reflections. Her writing is also very beautiful, raw, intimate and deep. It made me think a lot which is always a very good thing.
jsalowe's review against another edition
5.0
"Am I one of the weak? a weak woman possessed by incessant and mad rhythm? if I were solid and strong would I even have heard the rhythm? I find no answer: I am. This is all that comes to me from life. But what am I? The answer is just: what am I. Though I sometimes scream: I no longer want to be I! but I stick to myself and inextricably there forms a tessitura of life."
sarabelmonte's review against another edition
5.0
«La vida difícilmente se me escapa aunque me asalte la certeza de que la vida es otra y tiene un estilo oculto.»
starlight_eyes's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
4.0
by far the strangest book i’ve read??? only 80 pages but took me 2.5 weeks to finish because it’s so meandering and plotless and confusing. the general idea is an artist who usually paints but is trying to write for the first time is writing a letter to her former lover that she doesn’t expect him to read, but that’s a very loose framework. i don’t think it’s supposed to make sense but it was still very frustrating in that respect because my mind kept on trying to reread sentences to somehow make them make sense. she tells you explicitly that you’re not supposed to parse out every sentence and the meaning of the book is the vibes and the feelings you get when you skim over the specifics. it’s a very strange feeling to be purposefully skimming a book, it makes me feel like i’m only getting 10% of its meaning, but i guess that’s the point. i resonate with a lot of what she says about trying to grasp the present, the essence of the presence, the “it” as she calls it. that’s what stood out most to me and what i’ll remember the best. overall a memorable reading experience. don’t expect it to go quickly just because it’s so short.
_l1zz1e's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.75
annaralph's review against another edition
5.0
just stunning, really, lispector is a genius.the slim volume pulled me in like nothing else- it felt like spending an evening with her at her writing desk. pure and lucid and complex, the closest i've seen to someone capturing the present and existence as it's happening.