a girl on a bench

hi all! & welcome as we lead up to our first meet of the year for Los Angeles Ghosts Book Club this Tuesday, October 3rd, 2023 from 7:00 – 8:00 PM (PST) 🙂

we will be discussing September’s book of the month – the infamous Clarice Lispectors, the hour of the star.

please be prepared to vote on October & November’s book at this meeting, since this will be our first meeting 🥰

meeting link: LAGC – October
Tuesday, October 3 · 7:00 – 8:00pm
(https://meet.google.com/npt-bvyu-msh)

discussion topics:

• the effects on Macabéa placed on her from her poor living conditions
• the roles each character plays, including the narrators, on suppressing Macabéa’s character and her overall sense of worthlessness
• how do we see Macabéa coping with her depraved conditions?
• Olímpico’s oversized ego
• how did Macabéa’s death being so sudden, and so insignificant make you feel?
• how does a passion for nothingness sustain a passion for justice?
• “A Passion for the Void”
• Lispectors writing, narration, & dedication

notable quotes:

"So that's why this story will be made of words that gather in sentences and from these a secret meaning emanates that goes beyond words and sentences."

"As for the girl, she lives in an impersonal limbo, without reaching the worst or the best. She just lives, inhaling and exhaling, inhaling and exhaling."

“Things were somehow so good that they were in danger of becoming very bad because what is fully mature is very close to rotting.”

“I swear that this book is composed without words: like a mute photograph. This book is a silence: an interrogation.”

Macabéa's “soul [is] even more virgin than her body”

“It seems to me that her life was a long meditation on the nothing.”