I've only read one of Clarice Lispector's books and that is a collection of stories entitled "Family Ties", which was published by Carcanet, Manchester, UK, back in 1985. But the stories intrigued me.
The afterword has one illuminating passage:
Influenced by existentialist writers, Clarice Lispector showed an almost obsessive preoccupation with the themes of human suffering and failure, the disconcerting implications of our humanity, the hunger of the solitary man hemmed in by hostile forces, his awareness of inevitable alienation and the pressing need to overcome its dangers, and most forcefully of all, the terror upon recognising the ultimate nothingness.
It is a long time since I read them (I found the receipt for 12th January 1987, time 14:38, bought at Studentbokhandeln in Uppsala, Sweden, when I was living there). But I remember that most of the stories are all little cameos of everyday life, often set in flats and enclosed spaces, not something you would expect from a Brazilian writer, living in a country the size of a continent. Even one story that starts in Equatorial Africa, soon ends up in a flat. Family relations are focused on: parents & children, husbands & wives.
The very short story (3 pages) "The Chicken" is somehow symptomatic: just as it is about to have its neck wrung to make the family dinner, the chicken, or hen, lays an egg. The little girl then pleads with her mother not to kill the chicken. Her father joins the chorus. Gradually, the chicken becomes "the queen of the house". But alas, it is but a reprieve; in the last lines of the story, we read: "Until one day they killed her and ate her, and the years rolled on". This comes as a powerful punchline, given the fact that she had become so established as a member of the family.
I won't spoil any of the other 13 stories, but suffice it to say that there is something intriguing in the strange blend of observation and inner life in these stories. They're as good as anything written by, say, Katherine Mansfield, or other masters of the short-story (that neglected genre!).
I do get the feeling that the reason Lispector has been translated relatively much into English, while so many Brazilian writers are ignored, is an element of European sophistication and subtlety in her writing. These are not stories that breathe a Brazilian atmosphere, they could just as well have been written in, say, Eastern Europe. Which is not irrelevant here, as Lispector was in fact born in Ukraine. One intriguing fact is that although she lived and wrote in the Brazilian version of the Portuguese language, her family evidently spoke Yiddish at home.
There's a fairly thorough non-Wikipedia article about her at:
http://www.vidaslusofonas.pt/clarice_lispector2.htm
And the Wiki itself:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarice_Lispector
The afterword has one illuminating passage:
Influenced by existentialist writers, Clarice Lispector showed an almost obsessive preoccupation with the themes of human suffering and failure, the disconcerting implications of our humanity, the hunger of the solitary man hemmed in by hostile forces, his awareness of inevitable alienation and the pressing need to overcome its dangers, and most forcefully of all, the terror upon recognising the ultimate nothingness.
It is a long time since I read them (I found the receipt for 12th January 1987, time 14:38, bought at Studentbokhandeln in Uppsala, Sweden, when I was living there). But I remember that most of the stories are all little cameos of everyday life, often set in flats and enclosed spaces, not something you would expect from a Brazilian writer, living in a country the size of a continent. Even one story that starts in Equatorial Africa, soon ends up in a flat. Family relations are focused on: parents & children, husbands & wives.
The very short story (3 pages) "The Chicken" is somehow symptomatic: just as it is about to have its neck wrung to make the family dinner, the chicken, or hen, lays an egg. The little girl then pleads with her mother not to kill the chicken. Her father joins the chorus. Gradually, the chicken becomes "the queen of the house". But alas, it is but a reprieve; in the last lines of the story, we read: "Until one day they killed her and ate her, and the years rolled on". This comes as a powerful punchline, given the fact that she had become so established as a member of the family.
I won't spoil any of the other 13 stories, but suffice it to say that there is something intriguing in the strange blend of observation and inner life in these stories. They're as good as anything written by, say, Katherine Mansfield, or other masters of the short-story (that neglected genre!).
I do get the feeling that the reason Lispector has been translated relatively much into English, while so many Brazilian writers are ignored, is an element of European sophistication and subtlety in her writing. These are not stories that breathe a Brazilian atmosphere, they could just as well have been written in, say, Eastern Europe. Which is not irrelevant here, as Lispector was in fact born in Ukraine. One intriguing fact is that although she lived and wrote in the Brazilian version of the Portuguese language, her family evidently spoke Yiddish at home.
There's a fairly thorough non-Wikipedia article about her at:
http://www.vidaslusofonas.pt/clarice_lispector2.htm
And the Wiki itself:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarice_Lispector