The Hour of the Star Audiobook By Clarice Lispector cover art

The Hour of the Star

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The Hour of the Star

By: Clarice Lispector
Narrated by: Melissa Broder
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The Hour of the Star, Clarice Lispector's consummate final novel, may well be her masterpiece.

Narrated by the cosmopolitan Rodrigo S. M., this brief, strange, and haunting tale is the story of Macabéa, one of life's unfortunates. Living in the slums of Rio and eking out a poor living as a typist, Macabéa loves movies, Coca-Colas, and her rat of a boyfriend; she would like to be like Marilyn Monroe, but she is ugly, underfed, sickly, 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 preconceived notions about poverty, identity, love, and the art of fiction. In her last book, she takes us close to the true mystery of life and leave us deep in Lispector territory indeed.

©1992 New Directions (P)2017 TalkingBook Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Psychological Thriller & Suspense Fiction
Fascinating Writing • Complex Storytelling • Crisp Narration • Unique Prose • Great Production Quality
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I found the book to be a bit strange but Lispector is like that. However, many words were mispronounced which I found very distracting. It took away from the overall enjoyment of the book,

Many words are mispronounced

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Great narration of an incredible piece of literature from CLARICE LISPECTOR. Audiobook game on point. Get this. High repeat value.

Melissa Broder Sounds Amazing!

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This is far from a conventional narrative. Give it time — it requires so little — and you may be bewitched. I enjoyed Melissa Broder’s reading, although she did oddly pronounce a few words. Perhaps that was in the spirit of the text.

Hypnotic

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This was a really well done audiobook. The book is excellent and the narrating and and production quality are great!

Great!

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For the life of me, I will never understand how they got someone to read this audiobook who is almost totally ignorant of the correct pronunciation of many of the names and terms used in the book. So many things mispronounced, culminating in “Et Tu, Broot.” Bizarre.

This needs another reading.

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Reading this felt like a curious mix between being on acid and dreaming. The strange punctuation adds to the dreamlike quantity of the work.

Utterly unique

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This is book is fantastic and the fact the poet Melissa Broder is narrating just makes it even more awesome. Yes!

So awesome

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I don’t recommend getting this audiobook. The book is so short, just read it yourself- I only got the audiobook because I was in a time crunch and am a slow reader. I know Lispector’s writing is short and matter of fact in this book, but it is never unemotional. This narrator is unemotional, she sounds constantly dispassionate and doesn’t deliver lines with any sort of emphasis. Just completely one note. She also pronounced multiple things incorrectly. I have never been so dissatisfied with a narrator before, I’ve never written an audiobook review. But i felt compelled to write one for this. :(

Narrator falls short

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For this audiobook and for The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cuba the Portuguese 'J' is pronounced as a Spanish 'J,' which sounds like the English 'H' when it is more like the French 'J' and that shows a lack of interest in Brazilian culture.

Readers should learn how Portuguese is pronounced.

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This is book will keep you awake. It explores themes of poverty, alienation, and existential despair, highlighting the randomness of life and the struggles of the marginalized. It combines a raw social critique with philosophical reflection, leaving us to contemplate the fragility and meaning of human existence.

An incredible experience, like nothing I’ve read before

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