Take a photo of a barcode or cover
4.31 AVERAGE
4.31 AVERAGE
medium-paced
adventurous
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
It took me like 6 months to complete, but it’s worth every second! Some stories will/have stay with me more than others, but there are a LOT of stories!
Content Warnings
Moderate: Animal death, Death, Violence
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-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
emotional
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
slow-paced
I feel like I've finished running a marathon, having read 83 stories spanning an entire writer's life in the matter of two and half weeks. The prose is complex and strange, constantly pushing at the boundaries of intelligibility. If there's a singular thematic throughline, it's the futility of ego. As Lispector writes of another book in "Covert Joy," this is "a thick book, my God, it [is] a book you could live with, eating it, sleeping it" (370).
Volume highlights:
- "Obsession," telling of a struggle to reconcile one's self-perception to the perceptions of others in the context of a romantic relationship
- "Gertrudes Asks for Advice," in which a teenage girl in the throes of existential crisis seeks advice from a famed columnist
- "Love," in which the totality of the breathing world becomes visible to a woman as she is returning with her groceries, only for it to slip away from her in an instant
- "Happy Birthday," in which an extended family gathers to celebrate an elderly relative's birthday, an event neither they nor she care about
- "The Crime of the Mathematics Teacher," in which a man, alone on a plateau at night but for the corpse of a dog, attempts to absolve himself of an unforgivable sin
- "The Fifth Story," a story about storytelling and its masks
- "Covert Joy" & "The First Kiss," begin and end the section of stories that were first published in a volume titled Covert Joy and respectively describe a process through which a girl becomes a woman and a boy becomes a man.
- "Forgiving God," in which a woman contends with a sudden brush with God
- "Dry Sketch of Horses," asking what is horse and what is human
- "Soul Storm," a mass of magic and creation
- "The Sound of Footsteps," about woman and the annoying persistence of sexual desire
- "Pig Latin," although somehow only a few pages long, confronts a number of social beliefs around sexual assault
- "Brasília," a story of contradictions, of the world seen and unseen both
Volume highlights:
- "Obsession," telling of a struggle to reconcile one's self-perception to the perceptions of others in the context of a romantic relationship
- "Gertrudes Asks for Advice," in which a teenage girl in the throes of existential crisis seeks advice from a famed columnist
- "Love," in which the totality of the breathing world becomes visible to a woman as she is returning with her groceries, only for it to slip away from her in an instant
- "Happy Birthday," in which an extended family gathers to celebrate an elderly relative's birthday, an event neither they nor she care about
- "The Crime of the Mathematics Teacher," in which a man, alone on a plateau at night but for the corpse of a dog, attempts to absolve himself of an unforgivable sin
- "The Fifth Story," a story about storytelling and its masks
- "Covert Joy" & "The First Kiss," begin and end the section of stories that were first published in a volume titled Covert Joy and respectively describe a process through which a girl becomes a woman and a boy becomes a man.
- "Forgiving God," in which a woman contends with a sudden brush with God
- "Dry Sketch of Horses," asking what is horse and what is human
- "Soul Storm," a mass of magic and creation
- "The Sound of Footsteps," about woman and the annoying persistence of sexual desire
- "Pig Latin," although somehow only a few pages long, confronts a number of social beliefs around sexual assault
- "Brasília," a story of contradictions, of the world seen and unseen both
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
female gaze
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
lighthearted
mysterious
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
If you love short stories, you can't help but love Lispector. She manages to be both deeply honest and willfully deceptive Within each story the surreal meets reality head on.
Most writers have a default character they write about often. For Lispector it is the housewife. It is the child. It is the young woman searching for the truth about herself. It is a chicken. It is a country. She transcends that idea of a default. Instead there is a mood at work. An undercurrent.
Loneliness.
There's a depth to her writing but it always orbits that vacuum within the human heart: loneliness. Isolation peppers the stories, the same way it does with her novels.
To me this feeling is acute. It haunts me a great deal. To read it expertly dissected and examined, while at the same time sympathetically presented as an integral aspect of being alive rather than a failing of the person suffering... That's the key here.
Some stories are a few pages. Every single one has the potential to linger in the mind for far longer.
Particular favourites:
Daydream and Drunkenness of a Young Lady
A Chicken The Solution
Profile of Chosen Beings
Boy in Pen and Ink The Waters of the World
In Search of Dignity
(I have 21 other stories tabbed)
Most writers have a default character they write about often. For Lispector it is the housewife. It is the child. It is the young woman searching for the truth about herself. It is a chicken. It is a country. She transcends that idea of a default. Instead there is a mood at work. An undercurrent.
Loneliness.
There's a depth to her writing but it always orbits that vacuum within the human heart: loneliness. Isolation peppers the stories, the same way it does with her novels.
To me this feeling is acute. It haunts me a great deal. To read it expertly dissected and examined, while at the same time sympathetically presented as an integral aspect of being alive rather than a failing of the person suffering... That's the key here.
Some stories are a few pages. Every single one has the potential to linger in the mind for far longer.
Particular favourites:
Daydream and Drunkenness of a Young Lady
A Chicken The Solution
Profile of Chosen Beings
Boy in Pen and Ink The Waters of the World
In Search of Dignity
(I have 21 other stories tabbed)