Book Review: The Passion According to G.H.

The Passion According to G.H.

By Clarice Lispector

Review By Isabel Jordan

Clarice! Yes, her again. After reading my first Clarice book last year, I developed a new obsession, so I had to jump right into the next one. I will confess: I picked this one for the title. I wanted to know what this mysterious G.H.  thought about passion. I've been questioning love vs. passion for a while now, so I thought maybe this book would give me some insight. But I should have learned after reading The Hour of the Star, that the insight Clarice would give me would be more about the question itself than the answer, if there even is one. 

Here's the premise: Woman encounters a cockroach in her apartment and goes into the craziest spiral, questioning her existence and everything else that exists. Seriously, the craziest book I've read in a while, if not ever, but her descent into madness is so seductive that it pulled me right in with her. It drove me a bit mad too. I kept waiting for G.H. to snap out of it, but she never did. She embraced madness. Reading it made me laugh, made me anxious, even made me feel exhausted, and by the end, I was contemplating my own existential crisis with humour. If you love a chaotic read, this one's for you.

More To Read:

Isabel's review of The Hour of the Star (A hora da estrela) By Clarice Lispector