There are two types of experimental fiction. There’s the stuff that’s inaccessible: the ones that replace all verbs with synonyms for hedge, or only include sentences that start in the middle, end and then begin. And then there’s good experimental fiction, that actually uses experimentation to enhance, rather than obstruct, the story. The Hour of the Star is the second sort.
Written in the 1970s, Clarice Lispector’s book draws from her early life in Brazilian poverty, and perhaps even more so as a novelist. It’s a superb example of a book where the narrator is not only visible, he’s actively present and even obstructive in the telling of the story.
At first, Rodrigo S.M., the narrator, is a pompous and rather tedious being; a sort of literary Michael Winterbottom. But over time he seems to suffer a kind of breakdown as he wrestles with his own doubts, faith, the story and his main character, Macabéa. Macabéa in particular is as slippery as a Vaselined eel, dragging the story onwards to conclusions he doesn’t want.
It’s hard to separate both Macabéa and Rodrigo S.M. from Lispector herself. The former grows up in Brazilian poverty, much like the author, and the details of her life feel furnished by experience. The latter provides a running commentary on the writer’s process that feels drawn from her own life too. Emotionally, of course, neither represent Lispector (I hope, because in different ways, being either would be worse than a papercut massage), but by sharing these parts of herself, Lispector gives the writing a sense of real authenticity that’s very difficult to achieve in such as slim book.
As Rodrigo S.M. himself agonises over, there’s a really short plot to the book, so I won’t spoil it by discussing it here. But fundamentally, it’s about how the world treats people who are too broken to know they’re broken.
As well as experimenting with narrator conventions, Lispector’s writing style itself is fascinating to follow as she bends and tears standard grammatical rules. She breaks off sentences halfway through, uses punctuation oddly, has hanging adverbs with no verb to justify them – the effect is pretty mesmerising, and serves to hurl you into the narrator’s fragmented state of mind. Apparently she wrote the book on lots of different scraps of paper and then pulled them all together, and this shows – and really works.
My favourite thing about THOTS is the way she packages up insight into little sentences and scatters them through the book almost willy-nilly. A few example sentences:
Puberty came late because even weeds long for the sun.
One molecule said yes to another molecule and life was born.
What can you do with the truth that everyone’s a little sad and a little alone.
This is an occasionally funny read, but mostly it’s a tragedy. Steer clear if you prefer a standard storytelling technique, but otherwise jump in.
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