A review by starlight_eyes
Água Viva by Clarice Lispector

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.