An Apprenticeship or the Book of Pleasures

March 1, 2021
A love story--of sorts--by one of Brazil's finest writers. This slim but intense volume is known as one of Lispector's most accessible, or straightforward. If you're new to her oeuvre, that might strike you as something of a joke: There is very little--if anything--in this novel that is actually "straightforward." The plot, such as it is, involves a man and a woman--L�ri and the aptly named Ulisses--who love each other but can't be together. Anyway, not yet. First, L�ri has a journey of sorts to complete: "The way I want you to be mine," Ulisses tells her, "will only happen when you also want it the same way. And that will take time because you haven't discovered whatever you need to discover." So what does L�ri need to discover? The existentialists might have described it as a way to live authentically. Lispector writes: "The thing the human being aspires to most is to become a human being." The novel, then, traces the story of L�ri's becoming, which--with only a few exceptions--is an entirely inner journey. Those exceptions--an early morning swim, a few nights out for drinks with Ulisses, a cocktail party--don't give the reader all that much to go on. By far the greatest portion of the book is taken up with long, lyrical, philosophical passages, intermittently punctuated, that describe the subtle shifts in L�ri's thinking. These passages can feel overblown: "Had moments gone by or three thousand years? Moments according to the clock by which time is divided, three thousand years according to what L�ri felt when with heavy anguish, all dressed and made up, she reached the window." No doubt the novel is a crucial addition to Lispector's English-language body of work; still, it'll likely leave more than one reader yearning for something more earth-bound. Lyrical, ponderous, and dense, Lispector's latest also feels overblown.

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