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A review by gabriel_sakoda
The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
La Hora de la Estrella (The Hour of the Star) is a rather beautifully ugly story. It is by no means abject, but the narrator is so curious about the character he (Lispector writes as a fictional, male narrator) writes that the story as whole comes off as equal parts woeful and pitiful. His character, Macabéa, is sincerely unaware of just how bad her entire life is. Everyone, from all social classes, treats her like she is a fly waiting to be swat and she just keeps living in ignorant spite of it. On one hand, it is easy to see how this kind of humble living can be interpreted as mildly inspiring, like Macabéa has unintentionally made peace with her oppressive circumstances. But the more I read, the more I realized that her life was never her own to experience, so she never had the opportunity to create an identity in the first place. At which point, the story just became dreadful. And the narrator understood that too. The narrator would frequently interject with his own feelings about his character and how he feels sorry for her and the toll that it is taking on him to continue writing.
Looking at the complete story, with both Lispector's narrator and Maca in mind, Lispector critically examines the kinds of stories where only bad things happen and the struggle authors face in writing stories of endless suffering. The narrator felt backed into a corner by the turn of the final parts, like Maca was irredeemably written to fail. What gives this experiment greater meaning, however, is that the narrator wrote Maca based on a random woman he saw who had a "glimpse of perdition." This gave the narrator the motivation to write a story about a woman who was not sinful or damned in a magically "divine" way, she was just born poor. The affluent narrator was ultimately responsible for giving his fiction a voice and telling the story of someone whom he did not understand. The narrator's nihilist awakening mirrors that of the reader as they come to terms with Maca's life of punishment.
Looking at the complete story, with both Lispector's narrator and Maca in mind, Lispector critically examines the kinds of stories where only bad things happen and the struggle authors face in writing stories of endless suffering. The narrator felt backed into a corner by the turn of the final parts, like Maca was irredeemably written to fail. What gives this experiment greater meaning, however, is that the narrator wrote Maca based on a random woman he saw who had a "glimpse of perdition." This gave the narrator the motivation to write a story about a woman who was not sinful or damned in a magically "divine" way, she was just born poor. The affluent narrator was ultimately responsible for giving his fiction a voice and telling the story of someone whom he did not understand. The narrator's nihilist awakening mirrors that of the reader as they come to terms with Maca's life of punishment.