Review: The Passion According to G.H.

The Passion According to GH is the second book by Clarice Lispector I’ve read, having recently built more interest in reading things from Brazil. Her style of writing is stream of thought, with rhythmic erratic spurts and breaths. There’s no plot or story telling really, but Clarice Lispector has a way to take a mundane thing and make it a character’s most profound moment.

The novel centers around the unnamed narrator, apart from her initials, G. H. Early on we learn that she is a wealthy resident of Rio de Janeiro, has (or had) a maid, and lives on the top floor. She describes and alludes to her worldly status, and we get a sense of this:

“The apartment reflects me. It’s on the top floor, which is considered an elegance. People of my milieu try to live in the so called “penthouse.” It’s much more than an elegance. It’s a real pleasure: from there you dominate a city. When this elegance gets too common, will I, without even knowing why, move into another elegance?”

The narrator’s stream of consciousness shifts entirely when she encounters a cockroach in her former maid’s room. From there she starts to break down, as if she’s moving towards some form of individual and spiritual enlightenment. Even the profound sense she develops seems pretentious as she describes it in her mind, because it all surrounds her own status and upbringing, etc.. For instance, how she used social status to delay living in the present:

I had so little faith that I had intended merely the future, I believed so little in whatever exists that I was delaying the present for a promise and for a future

She continues to strip away her artistic curated self and remove the concept of making herself the hero of her own story, and how to truly live means to shed that mentality completely:

The gradual deheroization of oneself is the true labor one works at beneath the apparent labor, life is a secret mission.

It took a while, but it was quite interesting to read this stream of consciousness, and I cannot say I disagree with her overall conclusions to some level. However, I’m not sure who I would recommend this type of book to, it’s interesting, but it can be annoying to read, especially if you don’t like stream of consciousness and more so if you desire a story.