The Passion According to G.H.
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Aficionados of South American fiction as well as literary critics will welcome this posthumous translation of a nearly plotless novel by one of Brazil's foremost writers. Availing herself of a single character, Lispector transforms a banal situation—a woman at home, alone—into an amphitheater for philosophical investigations. The first-person narration jousts with language, playfully but forcefully examining the ambiguous nature of words, with results ranging from the profound to the pretentious: "Prehuman divine life is a life of singeing nowness" or "The world interdepended with me, and I am not understanding what I say, never! never again shall I understand what I say. For how will I be able to speak without the word lying for me?" These linguistic games frame existential and experiential crises that Lispector savors and overcomes. Although this idiosyncratic novel will not have wider appeal, those with academic or markedly erudite tastes should find much to savour.
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The Passion According to G.H. is the internal monologue of a woman undergoing a paradigm shift. Lispector's prose is nebulous and challenging due to the constraints of language to outwardly communicate inner experiences while also feeling intuitive and validating for anyone who's tried.
Inherent are themes of identity such as authenticity and the vulnerability that accompanies it:
“If I talk to you will I frighten you and lose you? But if I don't, I'll lose myself and in losing myself, lose you anyhow.”
The unfamiliarity of ourselves:
“Why don't I have the courage to find just a way in? Oh, I know that I have gone in. But I've been afraid because I don't know where that way in leads. And I've never before let myself go without knowing where.”
Of having more questions than answers but asking anyway then realizing the answers lie within and always have:
“What was happening to me? I shall never be able to understand it, but there must be someone who can. And I shall have to create that someone who can inside myself.”
And the resulting surprise of being more than you thought you were.
Truly one for the mistresses, mad-women, and poets.
i am g.h. and g.h. is me (ignore the fact that she ate a cockroach's dead body)
