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The Hour of the Star - Clarice Lispector, Giovanni Pontiero
The Hour of the Star
by: (author) (author)
3.12 65
The Hour of the Star, Clarice Lispector's consummate final novel, may well be her masterpiece.Narrated by the cosmopolitan Rodrigo S.M., this brief, strange, and haunting tale is the story of Macabéa, one of life's unfortunates. Living in the slums of Rio and eking out a poor living as a typist,... show more
The Hour of the Star, Clarice Lispector's consummate final novel, may well be her masterpiece.Narrated by the cosmopolitan Rodrigo S.M., this brief, strange, and haunting tale is the story of Macabéa, one of life's unfortunates. Living in the slums of Rio and eking out a poor living as a typist, Macabéa loves movies, Coca-Colas, and her rat of a boyfriend; she would like to be like Marilyn Monroe, but she is ugly, underfed, sickly and unloved. Rodrigo recoils from her wretchedness, and yet he cannot avoid the realization that for all her outward misery, Macabéa is inwardly free/She doesn't seem to know how unhappy she should be. Lispector employs her pathetic heroine against her urbane, empty narrator—edge of despair to edge of despair—and, working them like a pair of scissors, she cuts away the reader's preconceived notions about poverty, identity, love and the art of fiction. In her last book she takes readers close to the true mystery of life and leave us deep in Lispector territory indeed.
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Format: paperback
ISBN: 9780811211901 (0811211908)
Publisher: New Directions
Pages no: 96
Edition language: English
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Community Reviews
Themis-Athena's Garden of Books
Themis-Athena's Garden of Books rated it
1.0 Probably full of literary merit -- but decidedly not my jam.
I wasn't planning to write a review of this book, but since I already voiced off in a PM, I might as well copy my thoughts into a post after all. Long story short, I'm finding, once again, that a combination of art- and purposefully deconstructed speach and a virtually plotless description of drab...
Themis-Athena's Garden of Books
Themis-Athena's Garden of Books rated it
1.0 Probably full of literary merit -- but decidedly not my jam.
I wasn't planning to write a review of this book, but since I already voiced off in a PM, I might as well copy my thoughts into a post after all. Long story short, I'm finding, once again, that a combination of art- and purposefully deconstructed speach and a virtually plotless description of drab...
Nicole Reads
Nicole Reads rated it
3.0 [REVIEW] The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector
So she protected herself from death by living less, consuming so little of her life that she’d never run out.(p. 24). What a strange, short book. I'm not entirely sure if I enjoyed the story or not, but I did really enjoy the prose. There are many hauntingly beautiful sentences; I had to take a mome...
Mommy, am I cult?
Mommy, am I cult? rated it
3.0 The Hour of the Star
THERE ARE TWO TYPES OF WRITERS. The first one writes for his public, and the last writes for himself.Clarice is the kind that writes for herself, and it shows in her works. Specially in this novella.But it's okay, because it's Clarice Lispector, a woman who looks like an old Hollywood sexy villain, ...
shell pebble
shell pebble rated it
4.0 Uneasy hour
In telling the story of a 'meagre' character, an orphan from the poorest region of Brazil living in poverty in Rio, Lispector offers no philosophical certainty, proceeding from one diffuse reflection to another, usually conflicting one, while retaining a vice-like grip on the minimal narrative.The d...
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