Name: "The Hour of the Star" by Clarice Lispector
Start: 2025-11-18T19:15:00+01:00
End: 2025-11-18T21:15:00+01:00
Location: Cranberry Bar

*The Hour of the Star*, Clarice Lispector's consummate final novel, may well be her masterpiece. 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 de Janeiro and eking out a poor living as a typist, Macabéa loves movies, Coca-Cola, 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 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 novel she takes readers close to the true mystery of life, and leaves us deep in Lispector territory indeed. (translated by Giovanni Pontiero)

**Suggest and vote for future books in this google sheets document**:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1lIdNT7Z_nyzkpSq9jjnQe_jZoZDEHU0dACEFEvLaf40/edit?gid=855607985#gid=855607985

*\*\* Our venue, Cranberry in Zurich, do not charge us to use their space - therefore I would like to request that everyone buys at least one drink and / or food from Cranberry, so that they continue to be happy to have us be there. \*\**

André Thomas

English language LGBT Book Club Zurich

Identity & Language

Book Club

LGBT

Gay and Lesbian Friends

Book Lovers

LGBTQ

LGBT Friendly

LGBT Social

LGBT+

Transgender

Pansexual & Asexual

Non Binary

Reading

Lesbian

"The Hour of the Star" by Clarice Lispector

Cranberry Bar

Share

English language LGBT Book Club Zurich

"The Hour of the Star" by Clarice Lispector

English language LGBT Book Club Zurich

Details

Members are also interested in