The Hour of the Star by Rodrigo S.M by Clarice Lispector

Hello Everyone, welcome back to the blog. The read for this week is The Hour of The Star by Clarice Lispector. It tells the tale of Macabéa, a woman from northeastern Brazil living in Rio de Janeiro. From any outside perspective Macabéa’s life is not an enviable one – she doesn’t have any real friends, she is not blessed with good looks, and she lives in abject poverty. Despite all of this Macabéa is content with her life, largely because she doesn’t know any other way of living.

Before we are introduced to Macabéa we are introduced to the narrator of the book, Rodrigo S.M, through his lengthy preamble. Telling the story of the girl doesn’t come to easily to Rodrigo, and he spends a good portion of the book describing his struggle. Macabéa is a character entirely of his creation, and yet she seems to weigh heavily on his mind as if she was real. He is unable to fathom how someone with seemingly so little goes on living. In addition to her lack of material possessions, Macabéa also lacks any strong sense of identity. Her entire being can essentially be summed up by a few sentences. The narrator looks down on her for this, but I think to some extent he also envies such a simple existence.

A little bit later in the book Macabéa meets Olimpico, a metal worker also from northeastern Brazil and they become a couple. Olimpico is in many ways the opposite to Macabéa’s character. He has big ambitions of climbing up the social latter and becoming a politician, while Macabéa is perfectly content with staying the same. It is due to his aforementioned ambition that Olympico eventually grows tired of Macabéa and leaves her for Macabéa’s coworker, gloria, who is of a higher social class. Macabéa however takes the breakup in stride as she does with every other occurrence in her life, and continues as if nothing really happened.

“The Hour of The Star” is actually just one of 13 different given titles for the book – other titles include “Let Her Fend for Herself” and “I Can Do Nothing”. Out of all of these titles “The Hour of The Star” puts the most positive spin on the tragic events of the book. Macabéa dreams of becoming a movie star, and although that dream is squashed, she is given her spotlight in the end after she is run over by a car. People that would normally pay her no attention stand around her as she draws her last breath.

Discussion Question: Did you feel the unconventional narration style added or detracted from the reading experience of the book?