The Passion According to G.H.

This book was life-changing for me, I couldn't recommend it more! Much of the book reminded me of Kafka's The Metamorphosis, but if the story was completely inverted. I'm not a theist but the meditation on God was brilliant and genuinely shifted my perspective on theism as a whole. The discussion of beauty was also riveting, especially since I am a bit obsessed with beauty and disgusted by bugs myself, so this book really changed how consider beauty in my life and how/why/why maybe I shouldn't be so disgusted by bugs. I thought the ambiguous position of the reader was also really unique and brilliant--the narrator addresses the reader as several different people throughout the novel. The later chapters reminded me of Dante's Inferno, but it (like what I said with Kafka) totally turns it on its head. I recently took a class in Eastern Religions and made a lot of connections so if you are interested in that this is a great read. The use of space and time in the novel is also worth noting--kinda reminded me of some Virginia Woolf so if you like her books you will totally love this! Speaking of Woolf, she one time said reading Dostoevsky was like being in a whirlwind, and I think that applies perfectly to this book, as Lispector does an amazing job at repeating and transforming and connecting various different phrases/ideas that develop as the book goes on and it gives an effect I can't quite put into words but it just really amazed me. If you care about French Existentialism this is another must-read, as it seems to (as with other works) twist Sartre's No Exit and Being and Nothingness on its head a bit. Now that I'm on the philosophy train, really thought-provoking meditations on humanism and psychoanalysis are another reason why I loved this book so much. Politics (specifically nationalism, racism, classism, and gender) / othering are also explored in this book which I found fruitful and honestly, now that I'm writing this I don't think there is a base the reader didn't hit in my idea of a great book. I even think there's space to connect it with Plato's allegory of the cave (the wall mural), and his theory of aesthetics. Lastly, I really loved the way the book explores identity and how illusory individuality/inside is. With all that being said, the reading was surprisingly digestible and just does an outstanding job portraying complex ideas in a shocking clear/understandable manner. Read it!

A neurotic piece of repetitive self examination that ultimately rang hollow in its repetition of the inane. Felt like a massive relief to finally finish it.

I'm in something of a Lispector reading phase right now - read 'The Hour of the Star' decades ago, and although it made a lasting impression on me, I wasn't sure why, and with hindsight I somehow don't feel I was wholly 'ready' for now. Recently, I've read Agua Viva as well as The Passion, have The Besieged City on my 'bought and to read' list and am working my way through the Complete Stories.The Passion barely has a conventional plot, it's about - if anything - a transformative experience whose specific circumstances I'm not sure I am able to fully buy into. But this doesn't really matter - I feel Lispector is very explicitly inviting us to step into our own experience in old or (new-very-old) ways and what happens in G.H's maid's bedroom is by any stretch a good enough vehicle for what is essentially intended as a universalist 'message' or lure. At this stage in my life, personally I feel ripe for her work, and unhesitatingly ready to accompany her, or to acknowledge an appeal repeatedly made by the narrator of 'The Passion' to reach out my hand to her. Any comment on the quality of the translation is limited by my lack of knowledge of Portuguese, alas, yet with that massive caveat in place, I can say that nothing jars, and all my intuition is the adverb 'lovingly' would not be inapt.

É uma ótima tradução de "A Paixão Segundo GH" da Clarice Lispector, fica a recomendação. A tradutora realmente se preocupou em trazer todos os elementos do livro original, os simbolismos que surgem no correr da obra, para o equivalente da lingua inglesa, tarefa não muito fácil neste tipo de livro, que usa da técnica do fluxo de consciência como narrativa. O ebook manteve todos os detalhes estruturais da obra original, os elementos estéticos que a autora fez questão de ali colocar. Vale a pena.

One must like to read, of course. And not just for information, not for the satisfactions of ownership, the thrill of a deal well made—a bargain. This novel takes place almost entirely in a single, nearly empty room. A chance confrontation between a woman and a cockroach. We're in this woman's heart and mind and body for a hundred and ninety-three pages. But given these limited physical boundaries, Lispector plumbs the depths of Hell and gravitates up to Heaven somehow—confounding the distinctions between them. It's a meditation on all the big issues that we, mostly, don't have words to describe and which the busy world at large has no time for. The right kind of reader can spend a whole afternoon returning again and again to one passage or another. There is this, though: it is an infinitely rereadable book. Buy it once, live with it for life.