thomasgoddard's review against another edition
5.0
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)
ohwretchedme's review against another edition
challenging
mysterious
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
valentinaccosta's review against another edition
4.0
ive read clarice lispector since i was like ten but i don’t think i ever payed enough attention to the intricacies of her stories… she leaves so much out for interpretation that the work you have to do as a reader to piece the story together completely immerses you in her world. love her forever and will be reading one of her full novels now
writersbeard's review against another edition
challenging
dark
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
5.0
paulataua's review against another edition
4.0
What a find! I was so lucky to come across this. Lispector is such an original writer and the stories are so thought provoking. It is one big book with over eighty stories, and they are mostly stories that cannot be read one after the other. The Complete Stories has become my readers equivalent of a morning dip in the pool, and there are many such mornings to come.
I wrote that four years ago, but have since realized how difficult it is to do justice to a book of short stories, so thought I would just take one , 'The Fifth Story' and say something about it.
It tells five stories within two pages! The stories center around a narrator who prepares a recipe of sugar, flour, and plaster to kill cockroaches and an eerie significance grows with each story. There is something completely intriguing about Clarice Lispector. She is so difficult to follow at times and her writings are impossible to skim, but this very short story is a great introduction to her work. It’s one to love or hate, and it only takes five minutes to find out how you feel about it. I think it shows how important she is as a writer. It is pretty easy to find on the internet for free.
I wrote that four years ago, but have since realized how difficult it is to do justice to a book of short stories, so thought I would just take one , 'The Fifth Story' and say something about it.
It tells five stories within two pages! The stories center around a narrator who prepares a recipe of sugar, flour, and plaster to kill cockroaches and an eerie significance grows with each story. There is something completely intriguing about Clarice Lispector. She is so difficult to follow at times and her writings are impossible to skim, but this very short story is a great introduction to her work. It’s one to love or hate, and it only takes five minutes to find out how you feel about it. I think it shows how important she is as a writer. It is pretty easy to find on the internet for free.
iammyowngodandmartyr's review against another edition
2.0
EXTREMELY unimpressed with the introduction. This man just rambling on about how Lispector's writing is like witchcraft would be less irritating if there weren't such a long and shitty history of men associating women with witchcraft to trivialize/criminalize their work. Sometimes a woman is just weirdgood at writing and you don't have to use mysticism analogies to explain it to people. Like why are you pushing this so hard. She's not a fucking witch, dude. She's just a person who wrote things that people connected with.
Re: the stories themselves, I think short stories are like etudes and more fun to write/play than to read/listen to. Lispector's were often beautiful and bewildering but also depressing and outdated (e.g. "dusky like a Hindu", the story with "the He-she", every fat female character having intense self-loathing and/or moral deficiency, etc). Recommended for fans of Sylvia Plath.
Re: the stories themselves, I think short stories are like etudes and more fun to write/play than to read/listen to. Lispector's were often beautiful and bewildering but also depressing and outdated (e.g. "dusky like a Hindu", the story with "the He-she", every fat female character having intense self-loathing and/or moral deficiency, etc). Recommended for fans of Sylvia Plath.