Yesterday I abandoned the book A Hora da Estrela (The Hour of the Star), written by the author Clarice Lispector. This woman, born in Ukraine, took Brazil as her home and was and is to this day a celebrated writer. She wrote novels, chronicles, short stories, among other works, and is very loved by a large number of citizens.

The leader of the book club I’m in loves her, and Courtney Henning Novak brought Clarice to the TikTok generation with so much enthusiasm (as well as she did with Machado de Assis) - when important people in my life bring a beloved subject into discussion, I tend to look at it more carefully, which was what I did with the book mentioned above.

If you take separated phrases from Clarice’s book, they are tattoo worthy. But when you have a book full of them, jeez, it doesn’t make any sense. She keeps repeating, and repeating, and repeating herself, and what was her problem with commas? Didn’t she like them?

Her poetic way of writing is definitely not my cup of tea. She wonders too much about life and its meaning and uses different words to make the exact same reflections; I don’t know if she was rambling intentionally or if that was her unique way of writing. Anyway, A Hora da Estrela will be left in the donation boxes that we can find in some subway stations (I am leaving it in the Oscar Freire station because it’s my favourite one).

Anne Rios – Brazilian girl writing about Brazilian things

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