Month: February 2026

Categories
Lispector

The Hour of the Star (CLARICE HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME)

Macabéa, ridiculed, bullied, deemed irrelevant. She “wasn’t an idiot but she had the pure happiness of idiots” (60).  She “got up early in order to have more time to do nothing” (26). She “didn’t know what she was just as a dog doesn’t know it’s dog” (19). She was “a hair in the soup [that] nobody feels like eating” (51).  I mean, damn. Was this a novel or an insanely philosophical diss track? My girl just wanted to be a movie star, expand her vocabulary and get a boyfriend like the rest of us.

I see why Clarice Lispector let her fictional narrator,  Rodrigo S.M., take the blame. They really drag her through the mud. Rodrigo S.M. claims it’s his duty to write this story, that he absolutely has to, and he spells out what a burden it is to tell her story plainly. The writing however is rather grandiose, and he constantly interrupts Macabéa’s story with fancy words (that I don’t even want to quote because then this blog would be all quotes, and how dare Clarice Lispector be so quotable?) He contradicts himself, circles around the story, and withholds the full picture or any kind of comforting resolution. But he never promises to do so either.

I suppose he is kind of a personification of writers in general. He says he belongs to no social class, that he’s detached, and yet he treats the poor much like all of society does. He claims he wants to look away, but in reality, he cannot. He calls Macabéa “a truth I didn’t want to know about,” yet also insists that he loves her and he alone suffers for her (31). Somehow, he manages to pity her and put her down at the same time. And then there is her RAT of a boyfriend Olímpico. This course has really just made realize that I #hatemen. I mean, why is it that all the books in this course that were written by women feature really shitty boyfriends? Can’t be a coincidence is all I’m saying…

Back to Macabéa. While she has a “flimsy soul” she does have these (explosions) that I thought were cool. Then the ending killed me. Well, it actually killed Macabéa. CLARICE HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME. She gets hit by a car. The end.

But despite being a “nobody”, she is what she always wanted to be; “for at the hour of death a person becomes a shinning movie star” (20).  HOW DARE YOU INSINUATE THAT LIFE ONLY HAS MEANING WHEN YOU DIE. HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO LIVE NOW.

My question is wtf because genuinely wtf

Sofia Rocha Zandbergen

(Real question: What/who else could the narrator represent?)

Categories
Rodoreda

The Time of the Doves (And…)

I started this book slowly, a few pages a day. Then I read the entire second half in one sitting. At first Natalia’s problems are domestic, thanks to her tyrant of a husband, Quimet. But as the war takes over, Natalia and her children are brought to the brink of starvation and all she can do is try to keep them alive.

What I think broke my heart the most was Natalia’s almost detached narration. The story is told in first person, with many long, run-on sentences starting with “and”. Even so, Natalia doesn’t talk much, and we don’t really see her thoughts in depth. She rarely says how she feels beyond “I was tired” or “I felt sad” but that is the point. She has to block these things out in order to cope with the horrors around her. This woman is deeply traumatized, even before the war fully began.

I think the first passage of the novel spells out the rest of story:

“…I didn’t feel like dancing or even going out because I’d spent the whole day selling pastries and my fingertips hurt from tying so many gold ribbons…but she made me come even though I didn’t want to because that’s how I was. It was hard for me to say no if someone asked me to do something.”

This idea echoes throughout the novel. She marries Quimet even though deep down she prefers Pere. She does all this tortuous work around the house. She lets him name her children. She lets some eighty-doves take over their apartment because Quimet and the children want her too and so on and so forth. Then at the end when Antoni the grocer offers to marry her, she agrees, for her sake and the children’s sake. Natalia is a character who simply can’t say no.

But this is not just a personality trait, she is literally not a position to say no. As a woman in Spain during the civil war, she is not offered the opportunity of choice.

And I wonder, do you think she really found happiness at the end, or was it just another quiet compromise? I like to think she’s found a kind of happiness at the end.  Still, this novel broke my heart into a million little pieces. There are so many little moments that got to me like all the times she described the colour blue like the blue of Mateu’s eyes and the blue lights and when she dissociates staring off into the sea and when she’s digging out breadcrumbs from cracks in the kitchen table and…

Categories
Zobel

Black Shack Alley (Successful, but Still Sad)

Honestly, even though José gets his education and succeeds in life, the whole story made me very sad. I felt sad for M’man Tine, who literally worked herself to death in the sugar cane fields. I felt sad for José’s mother, whom he rarely saw because she was always working somewhere else. I also felt sad for the children of Black Shack Alley, whose reckless and seemingly “free” childhoods abruptly ended when their parents sent them to work in the petit bandes.

From the very start, José is portrayed as an incredibly thoughtful and obedient child. Despite running around and playing games with his friends, he does what he is told and feels immense guilt whenever he disobeys his neighbours, his grandmother, or his schoolmasters. Even at the age of five, when he tears his clothes, he carefully fixes them and ties knots to hide the damage. Of course, much of this behavior comes from fear of being beaten, but it still. Throughout his entire childhood, José listens to what people tell him to do, rarely questioning authority. In the end, it works out for him though, right? He gets into Lycée Schoelcher, essentially the equivalent of high school, and by passing his exams he could theoretically become anything: a doctor, an engineer, a lawyer etc.

One scene that especially stood out to me is when José is at school and all the children are lining up to buy cake. Afterward his friend and him went to the taps, “ Bussi to wash his fingers, dropping into the sink the rest of his cake; and I, to take my last fill of water” (162) This moment highlights how out of place José is and how much poverty defines his experience, even in spaces meant to offer opportunity.

We know the story is semi-autobiographical. Joseph Zobel himself had a similar childhood, one in which his family sacrificed everything for his education. In his case, it paid off: he became a renowned writer. In fact, we are reading this very novel, something his illiterate family would never have been able to do themselves. Knowing this offers some hope and reassurance to the reader.

If we did not know this outcome, how bleak the novel would be! There is so much love in the story, yes, but is tough love, brutal love shaped by survival.  My question to you is, how would our reading of the novel change if we did not know José’s real-life outcome?

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