“The Hour of the Star,” written by Clarice Lispector and translated by Benjamin Moser, is a difficult story to summarize. On paper, the novella follows a narrator who tells the life story of a woman named Macabéa, who lives on the outskirts of society, but in reality, the narrator seems to spend more time describing his own life and writing process than the life of the character he creates. Macabéa lives in an impoverished area of Rio de Janeiro, barely surviving off of the little income she makes, but seems to be constantly and blindly happy. She doesn’t feel like she has a purpose, but she continues to work and enjoy the little luxuries: Coca-Cola, painting her nails, and going to the movie theatre. In contrast, the narrator is a struggling writer, trying to make his mark on the world and constantly thinking about what it means to be alive, and what writing really is to him, as he tries to puzzle out the themes of Macabéa’s life.
Macabéa is naïve, inexperienced, and insecure, but seems to be happy even when her life mostly consists of work and sleeping in a tenement apartment she shares with four other girls. The narrator considers himself one of the most important characters of the story, and is wealthier than Macabéa, more confident and much more knowledgeable. He is an unreliable narrator, consistently stating things that contradict with his actions, and demonstrates how we craft a persona to avoid our fears. However, even though the narrator looks down on Macabéa, the narrator’s rich but miserable life seems to be so much worse than Macabéa’s. Lispector contrasts the mindsets of the narrator and Macabéa to show how poverty has affected her identity, as well as how differently the two view the world.
Lispector’s prose is incredibly unique: full of short, snappy clauses pieced together in erratic ways. She uses words in contexts they wouldn’t normally be applied to, drifts from thought to thought within a single sentence, and in many ways, rejects the usual rules of writing structure. This creates a dreamlike effect within the story, because the writing flows as erratically and strangely as a stream of thoughts. Her writing style is vivid and emotional at times, and abrupt or even sterile at others, but ultimately furthers the story and is almost a character in its own right.
I would recommend this novella to anyone who likes slightly strange and somewhat conceptual stories that heavily focus on the emotions, psyche, and differing life experiences of the characters. Each sentence has more ideas packed within it than a whole page of some books, so even though it’s very short, it takes some time to work through. The novella is, in some ways, a meditation on the act of writing, while simultaneously exploring poverty and identity. Try to read it with few assumptions of the plot and characters, and you’ll enjoy it much more and take more away from it.