The Passion According to G.H. (New Directions Books)

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!

I had to read this twice to say I might have read it once, but it will be a 'forever' read on my shelf! Lispector moves from the death of a cockroach, to being the cockroach, to sacrifice of self, of being, of existence of 'I' as everything which starts and ends with the cockroach, the desertion of the primal, to not only go over the precipice, but through it into the non, the nameless...before the nucleus.. Here are some quotes:"It is exactly through the failure of the voice that one comes to hear for the first time one's own muteness and that of others and of things, and accepts it as the possible language. Only then is my nature accepted, accepted with its frightening torture, where pain is not something that happens to us, but what we are.""I lived inside a system. It was as if I had organized myself inside the face of having a stomachache because, if I no longer had it, I would also lose the marvelous hope of freeing myself one day from the stomachache: my old life was necessary to me because it was exactly its badness that made me delight in imagining a hope that, without that life I led, I would not have known.""And it is no use to try to take a shortcut and want to start, already knowing that the voice says so little, starting straightaway with being depersonal. For the journey exists, and the journey is not simply a manner of going. We ourselves are the journey. In the matter of the living, one can never arrive beforehand. The via crucis is not a detour, it is the only way, one cannot arrive except along it and with it. Persistence is our effort, giving up is the reward. One only reaches it having experienced the power of building, and, despite the taste of power, preferring to give up.""Giving up is a revelation." Holy blow me away, Lispector!!! And you do again and again and again!Lispector is a philosopher, a mystery. In an interview she said she still didn't quite understand her story, 'the egg and the chicken'. She has been called a mystic. All I know is that her novels, her stories are absolutely mesmerizing and I never tire of reading them over and over.

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.

Strange. Beautiful. Amazing. It's not for everyone. It is confusing at first. But don't dismiss it. Keep going back to it. If you have patience, and a depth of soul, the book will open itself to you and change your life.

A mysterious work but a compelling read. Clarrice holds the readers attention with her unusual juxaposition of images through language. I kept going back for more although I sometimes felt I was missing some her subtle meanings. I recommend this book as a worthwhile challenge. There is a no nonsense approach to her spirituality and view of life which reveals itself with commpassion and humility throughout the book and I believe in her life as well.