The Hour of the Star
Book
Paperback/Softback
96 pages
978-0-8112-3753-6 (ISBN)
Description
In the ravishing new translation by Benjamin Moser, Clarice Lispector's The Hour of the Star-"her finest book" (The Nation)-is narrated by the cosmopolitan Rodrigo S. M., who tells the story of Macabea, one of life's unfortunates. Living in the slums of Rio and barely scraping by as a typist, Macabea loves movies, hot dogs, Coca-Cola, and her rat of a boyfriend; she wishes to be like Marilyn Monroe, but she is underfed, unattractive, and unloved. Rodrigo recoils from her wretchedness, and yet he cannot avoid the realization that for all her outward misery, Macabea 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 our preconceived notions (about poverty, identity, and love) to get at the true mystery of life.
Reviews / Votes
"This new translation of The Hour of the Star reveals the mesmerizing force of the revitalized modernist's Rio-set tale of a young naif, who, along with the piquantly intrusive narrator, challenges the reader's notions of identity, storytelling, and love." -- Meghan O'Grady - Vogue "Every page vibrates with feeling. It's not enough to say that Lispector bends language or uses words in new ways. Plenty of modernists do that. No one else writes prose this rich." -- Lily Meyer - NPR "Sphinx, sorceress, sacred monster. The revival of the hypnotic Clarice Lispector has been one of the true literary events of the twenty-first century." -- Parul Sehgal - The New York Times "Most late work has a spectral beauty, a sense of form and content dancing a slow and skillful waltz with each other. Lispector, on the other hand, as she came to the end of her life, wrote as though her life was beginning, with a sense of a need to stir and shake narrative itself to see where it might take her, as the bewildered and original writer that she was, and us, her bewildered and excited readers." -- Colm Toibin "I'm really obsessed by this writer from Brazil, Clarice Lispector. I love her because she writes whole novels where not one thing happens-she describes the air. I think she's such a great, great novelist." -- John WatersMore details
Persons
Clarice Lispector (1920-1977), the greatest Brazilian writer of the twentieth century, has been called "astounding" (Rachel Kushner), "a penetrating genius" (Donna Seaman, Booklist), and "one of the twentieth century's most mysterious writers" (Orhan Pamuk). General editor of the new translations of Clarice Lispector's complete works at New Directions, BENJAMIN MOSER is the author of Why This World: The Biography of Clarice Lispector, and Sontag: Her Life and Work, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. His new book, The Upside-Down World: Meetings with the Dutch Masters, will be published in October. Paulo Gurgel Valente was born in Washington, DC, in 1953, while his father was stationed in the Brazilian embassy. He has published books on economics and finance. Colm Toibin is currently the Irene and Sidney B. Silverman professor of the humanities at Columbia University and succeeded Martin Amis as professor of creative writing at the University of Manchester.