embernhard 's review for:

An Apprenticeship, or the Book of Pleasures by Clarice Lispector

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I can see why Sheila Heti loves Lispector. This was an Old Testament read, by which I mean all of the conversations between  Lóri and Ulisses felt like floating parables the reader was meant not to grasp fully, but instead to believe in. Big, challenging encounters with faith and questioning throughout. What is it to find yourself in another / can you really know yourself without a teacher / is life something you can learn and master. Really moving, even though Ulisses was a manipulative baby (I think, rather than proving the book’s alleged sexism, this was actually Lispector interrogating the degrading experience of having misogynist teachers)