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The Hour of the Star

New Directions Paperbook

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The Hour of the Star

By: Clarice Lispector
Narrated by: Melissa Broder
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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 and eking out a poor living as a typist, Macabéa loves movies, Coca-Colas, 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 the 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 preconceived notions about poverty, identity, love, and the art of fiction. In her last book, she takes us close to the true mystery of life and leave us deep in Lispector territory indeed.

©1992 New Directions (P)2017 TalkingBook Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Psychological Thriller & Suspense
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Clear and emotive performance for the audiobook of “The Hour of the Star”. One is struck by how alive the prose of Lispector’s last work is made by its performance aloud. Its aurality is an essential part of how it works as what it is.

Excellent performance

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While I’d only give The Hour of the Star 3 out of 5, I appreciated how it lets you inside a character’s head, but the fragmented style left me more frustrated. It’s thought-provoking but not an easy read, and honestly, I’m glad it was brief. The voice performance is really off and hard to follow, the emphasis seems to be in all the wrong places.

Unusual but worth a try

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I loved journeying of Clarice's abstract narrative. This book has an unique mystical and artistic style. Between the real and imaginary of the mind, and who can judge the limits of such undefined worlds.

Dare to be vulnerable

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After going through the process of recording it all surely the easiest thing to do is just label the chapters correctly.

The mislabelling of the chapters in audible

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This book my be brilliant, but it lost all meaning due to the inappropriate intonation.

Terrible Narration stopped reading as a result.

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