The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector

In the ravishing new translation by Benjamin Moser, Clarice Lispector’s The Hour of the Star—“her finest book” (The Nation)—is narrated by the cosmopolitan Rodrigo S. M., who tells the story of Macabéa, one of life’s unfortunates. Living in the slums of Rio and barely scraping by as a typist, Macabéa loves movies, hot dogs, Coca-Cola, and her rat of a boyfriend; she wishes to be like Marilyn Monroe, but she is underfed, unattractive, 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 our preconceived notions (about poverty, identity, and love) to get at the true mystery of life.