The Hour of the Star (Second Edition)

by Clarice Lispector, Benjamin Moser (Translator), Colm Tóibín (Introduction)

Overview

A new edition of Clarice Lispector’s final masterpiece, now with a vivid introduction by Colm Tóibín.

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780811219600
Publisher:	New Directions Publishing Corporation
Publication date:	10/24/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	128
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

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.
Colm Tóibín 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.

Editorial Reviews

Macabea is one of the great antiheroines of modern fiction...the literary discovery of the decade.

Vogue

As Lispector was dying in 1977, she and her secretary constructed this novel from notes, which partially explains its fragmentary nature. The detached male narrator, Rodrigo S.M., tells the story of Macabéa, a rickety, Coca-Cola-drinking virgin from the poor region of Alagoas, who moves to Rio's urban jungle. She lands a job as a typist and becomes enamored of the self-seeking Olímpico. After he dumps her for the worldlier Glória, Macabéa requests the advice of a fortune teller. No sooner is she buoyed by the seer's optimistic predictions than she is run over by a car. The joy of this novel is that we experience both Rodrigo's indulgent introspection as well as Macabéa's woeful life. This new translation begs comparison with Giovanni Pontiero's 1986 version; many phrases are identical, but some wording is slightly different or has been contemporized. The translator, author of the Lispector biography Why This World, understands the nuances of Lispector's often-hermetic style. VERDICT For readers who passed it up the first time, now would be the chance to become acquainted with the last and perhaps finest work of one of the foremost authors of 20th-century Brazilian literature.—Lawrence Olszewski, OCLC Lib., Dublin, OH

Library Journal