This gathers the complete short fiction of Clarice Lispector—every story from the nine collections published in her lifetime, from pieces she wrote as a teenager to her final work. Teenagers awaken to new powers, housewives are jolted by sudden epiphanies, and old people drift uncertainly, all rendered in prose that slips unnervingly between the mundane and the metaphysical.
A trivial sight in an everyday routine can tip a person into a crisis of spirit. The stories set them side by side: a mother riding home with her groceries sees a blind man chewing gum and is thrown into a whirlwind of her own imagination. The jump between the mundane and the metaphysical happens without warning, and every story turns on such a moment of crisis and revelation.
Behind the routines of housewives and mothers lie discontent and inner states intense enough to push someone to the edge of losing her mind. The stories treat women's everyday lives as a place where mystical and unsettling experiences happen, not as a dull backdrop.