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Rating: 
Summary: Profound ideas in a poor novel
Review: As a novel (or to use the publisher's pompous term "novelistic fiction"), Clarice Lispector's The Passion According to G.H. fails, and miserably at that. Style and indeed ideas should never supercede narrative, any type of narrative, experimental or no. It is ideas -- and ideas alone -- which flood this fiction, and one guesses that Lispector understood the folly of this; why else would she have offered up a note to "potential readers" at the beginning that reads more as an apologia designed to protect against criticism?Are there any characters? Well, there is one. A self-absorbed woman living an upscale lifestyle in Brazil. Her maid has quit; she sets to clean her apartment herself. What does she stumble upon? A cockroach. A big fat one that ultimately gets squashed, and in the face of the white ooze that seeps from its husk, our heroine embarks on a quest for the meaning of Life, Self, and God. The horrible unexpected causing a self-absorbed character to question his existence was better served in The Pigeon by Patrick Suskind (author of Perfume). Sometimes the most profound thoughts can be brought forth in the simplest of vehicles, a fact lost on Lispector as we meander through her character's suffocating stream-of-consciousness. Ultimately, it is the philosopher Lispector and her ideas who save this work from being totally excruciating. Indeed, the revelations that her character stumbles upon are absolutely edifying, can even cause a reader to re-evaluate their own belief system when it comes to approaching God and this thing called "Life." What is a shame is that in a piece masquerading as a "novel" and totally failing in that department, the nuggets of wisdom are buried within sentences that are pretentiously portentous from a character that really is insufferable.
Rating: 
Summary: rounding time and thoughts
Review: Clarice Lispector combines philosophy, autobiography and sociology when whe writes her turning around books. They are short, compact, evocative. They challenge old concepts of what makes fiction/reality.
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Summary: The Gospel according to the "Human Gender"
Review: I know that "human gender" sounds weird in English.I'm trying to persuade you to see the H. and the G., now invert it as it would be in Portuguese G.H. I also know that the word "Gospel" does not have the double "entendre" that "passion" evokes in Portuguese. If you read the King James version of the Bible, you may find "The Passion according to Mark, Luke, Matthew..." If I mention these aspects of the title is because this book should be read with a spiritual approach of some sort. Clarice uses language in the most unorthodox manner, a stylistic trait that the translator unfortunately neglects. He actually tries to "conform" to a more mainstream presentation of the text so the average reader understands it. He way didn't get it. Two thumbs down for him. In spite of that, Clarice's supernatural ability to pierce the soul comes across intensely whenever her fluid words challenge our preconceived, static understanding of what things mean. Biblical allusions (both in the Jewish and Christian sense, mixed with Eastern and Western mistical traditions can be subtly and overtly detected in G.H.'s (Genero Humano, Human Kind)inward exploration and personal revelations. The text is fluid and, as such, serves as a changing mirror to the reader, that is, as you read it the narrative transforms itself to reflect your inner projections. Whatever meaning you attribute to Clarice's words comes from your inner life. But, as she said, "don't worry about understanding. To be alive is much vaster than understanding..." Enjoy the ride. Enjoy the vision of your soul.
P.S. I strongly recommend this book to the dying, to those facing major life transitions, and to the truly living.
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