RaveThe Independent (UK)The consistent theme is the circumscribed role of women in mid-century Brazil – her protagonists are often daughters, wives, or ageing widows, stifled by a conservative society. But these characters resist in myriad ways, dreaming of real love, or good sex, or intelligent conversation – just as Lispector’s remarkable prose breaks with literary convention ... What shines through is a clarity of thought and an intensity of feeling. In an early story, \'Another Couple of Drunks\' the narrator encounters a man who \'kept mute… never getting excited about the chance to live.\' For the protagonist, as for Clarice Lispector herself, that seems to have been the greatest crime of all.