“The future, at least, had the advantage of not being the present, and the worse can always take a turn for the better... For, strange though it may seem, she had faith. Composed of fine orga...”
Work
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.
Quotes
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Clarice Lispector
Canonical work source
“The future, at least, had the advantage of not being the present, and the worse can always take a turn for the better... For, strange though it may seem, she had faith. Composed of fine orga...”
“I ask myself: is every story that has ever been written in this world, a story of suffering and affliction?”
“Do not mourn the dead. They know what they are doing.”