Right from the start, I enjoyed this book. Not only because it was one of the shorter ones, but we have also been assigned this term. But for a combination of other things.
First of all, I really enjoyed the themes. I enjoyed the juxtaposition of a rural part of Brazil, n this case, the northeast, and the more urban part of brazil, the southeast. Moreover, the other theme that I enjoyed being portrayed is sexism. The portrayal of how women navigate and exist in a sexist society that, by all means, does not want them to strive or succeed. I particularly enjoyed this bit because it has been a big part of Latin American culture and is still prominent nowadays. But often, portrayals of the various countries in Latin America, this being films or novels, usually only touch a little on this issue. Moreover, as a Latin woman, I saw things all too familiar in this navigation of women in a sexist world.
Another part that might not be it for some people is that I enjoyed the narrator’s style. It was not something I was used to. It had a feeling similar to omnipotent narrators because of how the narrator communicates with the reader. It made things more dynamic and enjoyable for me.
Moving on to the plot. Something that I found interesting is how the narrator kept saying that he was going to make the story simple and plain, with no other meaning of philosophical questions, but in practice, there were philosophical questions, and at times it was not as straightforward as it was out to be.
The plot was simultaneously complex and straightforward, like the narrator’s narration. The pure morality and mundane problems portrayed o the novel make it so simple in combination with the events unfolding. Macabea got cheated on, left, went to the doctor and got diagnosed with something she didn’t even understand. Latter, has been given hope by the fortune teller that her life is about to change for the better. By then, it had just ended by bleeding out on the side of the road. I was expecting a more full circle moment, maybe by discovering that the yellow car was being driven by someone in the story or she knew.
My question for you this week is: What were your thoughts on the final chapter, with an emphasis on the strawberry season part?
March 11, 2023
Week 9 [The Hour of the Star]
4 Comments
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Julia Moniz-Lecce
March 12, 2023 — 10:50 am
Hi Monsterrat,
Cool post! I never considered the actual place the novel is set in Brazil and the comparison between the rural and the urban. That’s a really cool observation. In my blog post, I also talked about the feminist and sexist discussions that this novel had and I agree that it was interesting to read about this in a Brazilian novel. I feel like I have read about these themes in Mexican literature and watched them on Mexican and Colombian TV, but I’ve never seen or read a Brazilian commentary on it. The simplicity of the novel is also interesting. Because it was so short, I think that adds to the accessibility, but I didn’t find the writing style very simple at all. There were so many poetic metaphors that really got me thinking and I thought that added to the complexity a lot.
Jon
March 12, 2023 — 11:50 am
“I enjoyed the narrator’s style. It was not something I was used to. It had a feeling similar to omnipotent narrators because of how the narrator communicates with the reader.”
Well, he’s sort of omnipotent but also indecisive, which is odd, eh? I talk about this in my lecture, and then also in my conversation with Sonia Roncador. It’s as though Lispector were trying to show us the novel’s “backstage”: how such a narrative is written. The narrator has a lot of freedom–but also a lot of anxiety, which is why at some point he even takes a break from writing before coming back to the book.
julia gomez-coronado dominguez
March 12, 2023 — 8:43 pm
Hello Montse, I loved your post! In the final chapter of the book, Macabea becomes sick and is diagnosed with tuberculosis, spending her final days wandering the streets of Rio de Janeiro. These moments also serve as a reflection of her life and the meaning of life, showing her and subsequently the reader how to face new adversities. Macabea contemplates the passage of time and achieves to recognize the beauty of life, even when she is facing her own mortality. This is reflected in the final sentence of the book, in which she talks about strawberry season. Macabea may be hinting with this that although things end, others new things will come, thus leaving a poetic closing of the book where she demonstrates that the end of life is not the end of everything.
Marisa Ortiz
March 13, 2023 — 10:18 pm
I agree with your thoughts on the narration. The 2nd-person point-of-view was unexpected but really enjoyable. It was thrilling to get a sense that the narrator was writing the story as we read it, that he was determining the plot as it unfolded; it made the ending that much more devastating to me, because it didn’t feel entirely out of his control.