Fascinating in its enigmatic yet intimate character, this collection contains Clarice's chronicles and commentary on everything from naming dogs, chasing after taxis, travelling (physically and metaphysically), watching soccer and drinking coffee, writing letters and seeing (or trying to see or trying to avoid) friends, conversing with God, conversing with her sons, smelling roses, voicing her anxieties on writing and living, to dreaming of scenarios and making scenarios out of dreams.

So perhaps for Clarice, there's always "too much of life" but never enough living to fill it. I know at least for me, it- I mean the book- is accessible and sometimes funny and somewhat comforting and always beautiful.

Having read Lispector's fictional work and loved it, I was delighted to be able to delve into the complete chronicles which I also thoroughly enjoyed

Too Much of Life is a supercut of the journalism Clarice Lispector wrote for the Jornal do Brasil between 1967 and 1977, now published in English for the first time. Written in true Lispector style—observant and memoiristic—she considers death, dictatorships, protests, power, and poverty, blurring the line between politics, philosophy, and religion in these insightful essays about life in Brazil. 

At such an impressive volume of 800 pages, all readers can expect to find something special hidden in the pages of Too Much of Life, but this is an especially rewarding collection for those already familiar with Lispector's work.

Clarice Lispector is a fantastic writer and this collection of thoughts, moments, stories, memories of hers are a delight, in the way they articulate and explore an array of human emotions.

I am now obsessed with Clarice Lispector’s writing, just so amazing, brilliant just wow. That said, it did grow tiresome reading some of the entries, especially when it came to topics that I had no previous knowledge about and frankly did not really care enough about to read about. Hence why some parts of the book dragged a bit for me, but overall really enjoyed this and I can’t wait to check out her other novels.

Thank you to Netgalley and Penguin UK for sending me an advanced copy

Even if I read some of Clarice Lispector's novels it's the first time I read non fiction. it was thought provoking and fascinating. A great writer, these articles made me fall in love again with her style of writing.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this arc, all opinions are mine

Lispector's mind, writing style and themes are absolutely my cup of tea, which means that I thoroughly enjoyed this collection of chronicles spanning 7 years.

Clarice Lispector is mainly known for her fiction. But being a single mother of two, she used to earn extra income by writing a weekly column (in Brazilian Portuguese “crônica”) for the Rio-based newspaper ‘Jornal do Brasil’ since 1967. Around 80 per cent of this volume contains Clarice’s crônicas in the ‘Jornal do Brasil’ between 1967 and 1973, while the remaining contains some other crônicas published sporadically in various magazines and newspapers. Clarice’s crônicas provides a great introduction to readers unfamiliar with this form of literary expression. In Brazil, crônicas have a unique place in newspapers where writers would communicate with their readers about daily topics (for Clarice, her crônicas appeared every Saturday).

The crônicas produced by Clarice possess some unique characteristics, albeit she admits in some of her crônicas that she didn’t enjoy writing these columns and mainly did it to supplement her meagre income as a writer in Brazil (as she describes it back then, only two Brazilian authors were capable of living entirely from their writing, namely Érico Veríssimo and Jorge Amado). Having to raise her two children by herself following her divorce from a Brazilian diplomat, was a practical decision on her part. Yet Clarice’s crônicas are far from substandard. They’re witty, full of surprise and full of reflections on the nature of life. There are frequent times when conversations she had with her children would appear in her crônicas, reflecting the informal nature and the relaxed attitude of how she addressed the readers in her crônicas.

Clarice is also fond of addressing her readers directly in her crônicas. There were times when she would admit to having no inspiration of some sort and would just fill her column with responses to letters she received from
her readers. Some other time, it was another cronista (the term for people who write crônicas) in ‘Jornal do Brasil’, such as the case of Armando Nogueira, who became her target. Armando challenged her to write a crônica about football, while he wrote one “about life”, a challenge they both met. Her crônicas also at times feature various taxi drivers with whom she conversed, when once a taxi driver decided to give her “a life lesson” by telling his life story of leaving his previous job as a beggar and climbing up the ladder to finally own a taxi of his own.

It is also apparent that Clarice never eyed a publication of her collected crônicas since as her son later admits at the afterword of this volume, there are instances when recycled crônicas would appear in later years between 1967 and 1973 in deadline-induced panic, as Clarice believed that her readers would not be aware of this practice. The practice more or less shows the nature of authorship at that time, with people having no way to find out duplication of texts through search engines. Writers at that time also needed in one way or another make duplicates of their writings, since they had no way to rewrite them if they got lost. There was no laptop or cloud computing back then. In 1966, Clarice experienced a severe burning of her hands and legs after she fell asleep with a lit cigarette. Her right hand almost got amputated and she had to rely on her nurse to deliver her crônicas to the newspaper.

More than anything else, Clarice’s crônicas are a celebration of life with its multitudes. Clarice was the kind of person who could see the beauty of life even in the unlikeliest circumstances, in situations that we’d rather avoid such as talking to some taxi drivers. And for readers who have been acquainted with Clarice’s works, the crônicas also provide intimate information on Clarice’s personality and how she viewed her literary works spanning several years of her most productive period as a journalist.

“No, I can’t.” Thus begins Clarice Lispector’s Too Much of Life, which collects the hundreds of crônicas, or vignettes, the Brazilian novelist wrote for the country’s press between 1967 and 1977./

Those familiar with her writing will find old obsessions here: tragedy, religion, death, the cunning and cruelty of men and women, the pleasure of living and, after a 1967 fire leaves her scarred for life, the pain of defeat.

For those unfamiliar with her, this book opens a door into her uniquely challenging and rewarding body of work. Stretching over a decade – and across nearly 800 pages – the pieces, some amounting to a few sentences, some many pages long, make up a self-portrait in bits and pieces. The result is, like Lispector herself, witty, mystical, surreal and profound: a treasure to return to again and again.

For those of us who read Lispector's 'Selected Cronicas', this is the book we've been waiting for - the complete set of columns written over about a ten year period from 1967-1977. With their immediacy and accessibility these short pieces work wonderfully both as an introduction to Lispector's sensory, perceptive, intuitive world, and as an accompaniment to her more difficult, interior novels and her stories. Organised chronologically, these pieces are an ideal companion to the Penguin Complete Stories and it's not hard to trace thematics (gender, bodies, power, moments of epiphany, the gaze) between the two volumes.

Although these columns are not designedly an autobiography, we can trace elements of Lispector's life through then. Most of all, though, these offer jewel-like refractions of her wonderfully engaged and engaging mind, the breadth of her interests, the surprising, exciting nature of her thoughts, and her wonder and love of life, though never with anything approaching sentimentality.

Despite having this ARC, I had to rush out to buy a hard copy of this book because it needs and deserves to be annotated such is the stimulating, interrogative, dialogic nature of the writing. One to read from cover to cover *and* to keep on your bedside table for re-dipping into - I can't get enough of Lispector and this is one of my books of the year!

A comprehensive collection of non-fiction writing from one of the most profoundly talented writers of a generation. This collection is immense, spanning the breadth of literary criticism, journalism, memoir and musings on all topics from art, culture and politics. There is very much something for everyone here, tempered by Lispector's measured, searing prose which is a delight to read.