Reviews

Aficionados of South American fiction as well as literary critics will welcome this posthumous translation of a nearly plotless novel by one of Brazil's foremost writers. Availing herself of a single character, Lispector transforms a banal situationa woman at home, aloneinto an amphitheater for philosophical investigations. The first-person narration jousts with language, playfully but forcefully examining the ambiguous nature of words, with results ranging from the profound to the pretentious: ``Prehuman divine life is a life of singeing nowness'' or ``The world interdepended with me, and I am not understanding what I say, never! never again shall I understand what I say. For how will I be able to speak without the word lying for me?'' These linguistic games frame existential and experiential crises that Lispector savors and overcomes. Although this idiosyncratic novel will not have wide appeal, those with academic or markedly erudite tastes should like it very much. (September)

This Ukranian-born Brazilian author is regarded in France as a philosopher rather than a storyteller. Here she offers a meditation on the human condition full of aphoristic declarations and merciless self-scrutiny. The narrator, whose identity is continually undone and remade, claims she doesn't have ``a word to say,'' then observes, ``But if I don't force myself to talk, silence will forever engulf me in waves.'' Plot is secondary; the aim is to push language to the limit. Part of the publisher's new ``Emergent Literatures'' series, which will make available in English authors whose ``works have been ignored . . . because of their difference from established models of literature,'' this is recommended for adventuresome readers. Jack Shreve, Allegany Community Coll., Cumberland, Md.