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Soulstorm: Stories
Twenty-nine stories and short pieces, originally two separate collections, one written as a challenge from her editor — The Stations of the Body — stories about sex and the body written during one weekend, as well as a longer, more developed collection, Where You Were At Night, concerning the inner lives of women. Both are remarkable, both are unmistakably Lispector.
176 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1989
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938 people want to read
About the author
Clarice Lispector
246 books8,165 followersClarice Lispector was a Brazilian writer. Acclaimed internationally for her innovative novels and short stories, she was also a journalist. Born to a Jewish family in Podolia in Western Ukraine, she was brought to Brazil as an infant, amidst the disasters engulfing her native land following the First World War.
She grew up in northeastern Brazil, where her mother died when she was nine. The family moved to Rio de Janeiro when she was in her teens. While in law school in Rio she began publishing her first journalistic work and short stories, catapulting to fame at age 23 with the publication of her first novel, 'Near to the Wild Heart' (Perto do Coração Selvagem), written as an interior monologue in a style and language that was considered revolutionary in Brazil.
She left Brazil in 1944, following her marriage to a Brazilian diplomat, and spent the next decade and a half in Europe and the United States. Upon return to Rio de Janeiro in 1959, she began producing her most famous works, including the stories of Family Ties (Laços de Família), the great mystic novel The Passion According to G.H. (A Paixão Segundo G.H.), and the novel many consider to be her masterpiece, Água Viva. Injured in an accident in 1966, she spent the last decade of her life in frequent pain, steadily writing and publishing novels and stories until her premature death in 1977.
She has been the subject of numerous books and references to her, and her works are common in Brazilian literature and music. Several of her works have been turned into films, one being 'Hour of the Star' and she was the subject of a recent biography, Why This World, by Benjamin Moser.
She grew up in northeastern Brazil, where her mother died when she was nine. The family moved to Rio de Janeiro when she was in her teens. While in law school in Rio she began publishing her first journalistic work and short stories, catapulting to fame at age 23 with the publication of her first novel, 'Near to the Wild Heart' (Perto do Coração Selvagem), written as an interior monologue in a style and language that was considered revolutionary in Brazil.
She left Brazil in 1944, following her marriage to a Brazilian diplomat, and spent the next decade and a half in Europe and the United States. Upon return to Rio de Janeiro in 1959, she began producing her most famous works, including the stories of Family Ties (Laços de Família), the great mystic novel The Passion According to G.H. (A Paixão Segundo G.H.), and the novel many consider to be her masterpiece, Água Viva. Injured in an accident in 1966, she spent the last decade of her life in frequent pain, steadily writing and publishing novels and stories until her premature death in 1977.
She has been the subject of numerous books and references to her, and her works are common in Brazilian literature and music. Several of her works have been turned into films, one being 'Hour of the Star' and she was the subject of a recent biography, Why This World, by Benjamin Moser.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 46 reviews
July 31, 2011
Clarice Lissssssspector. It's on the back of the tongue, the name of the authoress from the wilds of Russia to Brazil. Soulstorm is a collection of stories about lives of her and her others. Her voice that was baby talk as we all learn to walk, and Russian and Portugese. A self concious translator Alexis Levitin in his voice that was baby talk, English and I wanna do a good job. I want, I need, the building blocks of language and images. They start and end somewhere. It's on the tongue that I can curl because I am a genetic freak. I can bend back my opposable thumbs because I am a double genetic freak. From the back, rolling to the front of the mouth and then...Words, words, words. Something got lost in my translation. Lisssssp. My speech therapist said get up and walk upright like a man. This is how it is supposed to be. From the kangaroos suffocating pouch to the wild pack of dogs. My wolf mama taught me to eat the insides of the organs because I'm a vegetarian and my body should eat itself rather than starve to death. They gave me a name and threw me to the wolves. Clarice Lispector doesn't want her name. Lisssssp. What name did she put on when she tore hers off? Baby talk, girl talk and The Golden Girls sex talk. Names worn with pride and scorn. Names changed to protect the innocent. Inside the womb the name tag reads Helen Keller. Mother, son, wife, lover. What else is there? Naming of things. The names are to avoid saying what things actually are. Lispector's stories read like a backwards story trick in a film. She's not a woman. He's her son. I would have looked for something else had I been in that room than a named relationship that doesn't mean anything because any writer (and reader) worth her salt oughta know they aren't all the same. She was old and feeling like death. Life didn't flash before her eyes so much as return to the womb of blindness. Needing to be fed, touched, the smart babies hear Einstein and Mozart through the wall of flesh and guts. It's a failure to not walk fast enough in place and beat the stop watch of old age. Homo erectus resorted to masturbation at the age of eighty-one when her husband no longer wanted her and the doctor said she really was too old. It's too bad to get old? Back to the bare assed Johnson and Johnson's necessities of life?
"But if God made us so, then so be it. With empty hands. With nothing to talk about."
More than once (more than twice) in this volume of stories Clarice Lispector denies the importance of literature. The problem with these stories is the going back to the beginning as if that is what death is, as if the ending is the answer to what came before. I liked the most the shifting of the words between stories as picking up one foot on one page and setting down the wrong right foot on the next. What happens next is what happens next. I deny the end because of the naming. The looking around gave up. I've seen all there is to see? The ache will not be eased by fucking because I am too old so there is nothing else to do? No! Someone HAS to die? It happened because it happened? If someone thought that literature was the only important thing they cannot know very much about literature. You have to live it. Why all of these stories about husks of women that cannot be filled? Dreams, the tongues! Bend your thumbs and have something to talk about. Make it up. What I know about Clarice Lispector is that she was horny. She talked a lot about what she didn't do in her stories. The imagination of what she made up? That's what I wanted and that's why literature is important. It doesn't have to be a mother fucking stop watch in the sky (life, that is). I can't believe I'm saying this (because my mind is a hell hole) but I was so glad to have my mind and not Lispector's. At least I got my mind on more than the beginning or the end for all it goes round and round in circles and staircases and pits (erm valleys). Lisssssp. I don't got the whole name!
You can't come home.
"But if God made us so, then so be it. With empty hands. With nothing to talk about."
More than once (more than twice) in this volume of stories Clarice Lispector denies the importance of literature. The problem with these stories is the going back to the beginning as if that is what death is, as if the ending is the answer to what came before. I liked the most the shifting of the words between stories as picking up one foot on one page and setting down the wrong right foot on the next. What happens next is what happens next. I deny the end because of the naming. The looking around gave up. I've seen all there is to see? The ache will not be eased by fucking because I am too old so there is nothing else to do? No! Someone HAS to die? It happened because it happened? If someone thought that literature was the only important thing they cannot know very much about literature. You have to live it. Why all of these stories about husks of women that cannot be filled? Dreams, the tongues! Bend your thumbs and have something to talk about. Make it up. What I know about Clarice Lispector is that she was horny. She talked a lot about what she didn't do in her stories. The imagination of what she made up? That's what I wanted and that's why literature is important. It doesn't have to be a mother fucking stop watch in the sky (life, that is). I can't believe I'm saying this (because my mind is a hell hole) but I was so glad to have my mind and not Lispector's. At least I got my mind on more than the beginning or the end for all it goes round and round in circles and staircases and pits (erm valleys). Lisssssp. I don't got the whole name!
You can't come home.
May 4, 2010
I wanted to like this book a lot more than I did.
The book is uneven. It's two short short-story collections mashed together into one. The first short story collection features a lot of quick precise stories, with a running theme (or maybe reality of how they got written) as being written by assignment. There was a feeling of the stories being fluff, but with a dark streak running under the surface of them. Sort of like an evil piece for Reader's Digest.
The second half of the collection were longer stories, that needed more of my attention and even then I felt like I had no idea what was going on during most of them. It was like going from Raymond Carver in the first collection to John Barth at his most annoying beret wearing obtuseness. I feel like I've written that comparison someplace else recently, if I have my apologies, and in my defense nothing I say is at all original. But it might have just been that I thought about this review and started writing it at one point and gave up. Whatever. An uneven collection. I'll try reading her again sometime because for some reason I want to like her.
The book is uneven. It's two short short-story collections mashed together into one. The first short story collection features a lot of quick precise stories, with a running theme (or maybe reality of how they got written) as being written by assignment. There was a feeling of the stories being fluff, but with a dark streak running under the surface of them. Sort of like an evil piece for Reader's Digest.
The second half of the collection were longer stories, that needed more of my attention and even then I felt like I had no idea what was going on during most of them. It was like going from Raymond Carver in the first collection to John Barth at his most annoying beret wearing obtuseness. I feel like I've written that comparison someplace else recently, if I have my apologies, and in my defense nothing I say is at all original. But it might have just been that I thought about this review and started writing it at one point and gave up. Whatever. An uneven collection. I'll try reading her again sometime because for some reason I want to like her.
February 18, 2025
“I am sad because I am happy This is not a paradox. After the act of love, isn't there a certain sadness? That of plenitude.”
the second half broke me
the second half broke me
December 17, 2023
This was the most difficult book I ever completed. There are sections of this book that rival Joyce and Pynchon in it's complexity. Lispector is one of the greatest writers of all time and it is evident in sections of this book when a profound paragraph or sentence shakes your world (had several existential moments) but I did find myself lost in several sections. I would recommend starting with another one of her books, especially for the Lispector debutante.
May 27, 2023
First half amazing second half not so much
June 6, 2019
First half good, second half not so much.
September 5, 2021
The inimitable Clarice on sex and death and the strange frustrations of trying to understand the Self. Lucid, often strange, always a pleasure to read.
July 24, 2024
4.5 (favourites: A Report on a Thing, An Emptying)
when I buy a clock I’ll name it Sveglia too.
when I buy a clock I’ll name it Sveglia too.
November 13, 2013
This book contains two short story collections, and I liked the first collection much better than the second. Which surprised me, because Lispector admits she wrote most of the first collection in a weekend--but I suppose this actually makes sense because the first collection is so raw and at the veins, while the second collection feels at times overproduced. The (very nice in its own right) Introduction is by Grace Paley, which is fitting because there is a very Paley-esque quality to many of Lispector's short-short stories: minimalist, bare and unflinching.
December 2, 2019
She is one of the best. Each book written by Clarice Lispector is like a boomerang. You go on with your life, you let the book go, but her words are always returning to you, always, no matter what you have done or how long it has been since you've touched any of her books. The short stories in this collection are like injections in your brain which help restoring your own memory and seeing things in a new, different, way.
January 14, 2008
This book was originally two separate texts and it shows. The voice of the first section is drastically different than the second. Both are remarkable but in very different ways.
April 12, 2009
Favorite story was "Dry Point of Horses". Love her way with words throughout.
November 8, 2025
Clarice Lispector is awesome. These stories are so badass. "A Report on a Thing" reminded me a of the game/riddle "Green Glass Door," which was so funny because it also didn't make sense. Most of these were totally esoteric. People talk a lot about books not having a plot, and in this collection Lispector's stories have even less than that. Maybe I preferred the longer stories, because they gave me more time to be properly and thoroughly confused.
My favorites were: Miss Algrave, Pig Latin, But it's Going to Rain, In Search of Dignity, The Departure of Train, Where You Were At Night, A Report on a Thing, and The Conjurations of Dona Frozina.
My favorites were: Miss Algrave, Pig Latin, But it's Going to Rain, In Search of Dignity, The Departure of Train, Where You Were At Night, A Report on a Thing, and The Conjurations of Dona Frozina.
December 15, 2025
I enjoyed the second half - the stories from Where You Were at Night - much more than the first half. My favorite one is Waters of the Sea. I wouldn’t necessarily call many of these “stories” but rather short fiction or prose excerpts, highlighting bits of humanity or psychology or nature ,and while many of them didn’t resonate with me personally I enjoyed the writing style and ideas being explored. I was surprised to discover this author didn’t publish poetry collections because while reading I often felt like she was hovering on the edge between prose and poetry. I’m excited to read more from her.
February 13, 2023
I didn't realize that this entire collection is included in Lispector's 'Complete Stories' by New Direction, which I had read and thoroughly enjoyed before.
These are stories from later in her career, I believe. And they are worthy. But, oh, if I could only hold on to the moments of ecstasy! And I've realized that that is what her prose is: moments, ecstasies, the absent present, the 'not yet' or 'not enough', sand slipping through your fingers.
It's like a bitter and sugary lemon candy that you try suck even more only for it, like everything else, to burst and dissolve away.
These are stories from later in her career, I believe. And they are worthy. But, oh, if I could only hold on to the moments of ecstasy! And I've realized that that is what her prose is: moments, ecstasies, the absent present, the 'not yet' or 'not enough', sand slipping through your fingers.
It's like a bitter and sugary lemon candy that you try suck even more only for it, like everything else, to burst and dissolve away.
April 24, 2025
sobbing…
“I am now searching in the rain for a joy so great it would become razor sharp, a joy which would put me in touch with an intensity resembling the intensity of pain. But the search is useless. I am at the window, and only this happens: I see the rain with benevolent eyes, and the rain sees me, and all is in harmony. We are both busy flowing. How long will my condition last? I notice that, with this question, I finger my pulse to feel where the painful throbbing of before should be. And I see that there is no painful throbbing.”
i love clarice lispector so much
“I am now searching in the rain for a joy so great it would become razor sharp, a joy which would put me in touch with an intensity resembling the intensity of pain. But the search is useless. I am at the window, and only this happens: I see the rain with benevolent eyes, and the rain sees me, and all is in harmony. We are both busy flowing. How long will my condition last? I notice that, with this question, I finger my pulse to feel where the painful throbbing of before should be. And I see that there is no painful throbbing.”
i love clarice lispector so much
September 6, 2024
Some of her meanderings were so slippery that no sooner had I finished reading them had I forgot and what the fuck she was talking about at all. Clarice kicked up a true love for language, not even, but just..sentences? .. I didn’t even imagine was possible and splayed out feelings I didn’t even know that I had. I appreciated that no thoughts were spared.
September 11, 2024
Abandoned around halfway. Poor showing by Lispector, besides ‘The Departure of the Train’, which is interesting in its juggling of subjects and its style. I suspect this is a second-rate translation, too. It’s possible the sedond collection was to be higher quality, but the work had already betrayed my faith and interest.
October 15, 2025
Every single story in this collection left me scratching my head, but, at the same time, chuckling to myself. Prose unlike anything I've read before, stories that defy genre. Many are more like prose poems. A challenging read as a whole. My favorites:
In Search of Dignity
The Departure of the Train
A Report on a Thing
The Dead Man in the Sea at Urca
Waters of the Sea
In Search of Dignity
The Departure of the Train
A Report on a Thing
The Dead Man in the Sea at Urca
Waters of the Sea
May 26, 2024
the most invigorating and fascinating: 'The Departure of the Train', ''Silence', 'Such Gentleness', 'Waters of the Sea', 'Life au Naturel'. The rest- frankly- are absurd, nonsensical but weirdly charming.
July 29, 2025
Brazilian - but not really but really. The first time I've managed to finish a book by Lispector, made easier because they are short stories. Some lost me, barely captured my interest, others stunning. Especially the last few. Which were short and beautiful.
October 20, 2018
3.5 stars
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January 25, 2024She harries the moment, she devours its fire, and the fire sweetly burns, burns, and blazes.
September 13, 2024
2 story collections:
***** The Stations of the Body (aka The Via Crucis of the Body) (1974)
**** Where Were You at Night (1974)
***** The Stations of the Body (aka The Via Crucis of the Body) (1974)
**** Where Were You at Night (1974)
July 22, 2025
no one has ever done it like her
April 10, 2025
“And she, alive as if she were still somebody, she who was nobody”
Everything ends, we’re all failures, we age, we die, we’re powerless against nature. Even so, nature brings us power. Failing, aging, and dying do too.
God a few of these stories may have changed my life I think. Theres just a certain few lines that have been circulating through my mind ever since I read them. It really says a lot when a book can do that to me.
I will say there’s definitely a handful of dud stories in the last 30 pages but I’ll let it slide because the good ones are basically perfect. Honestly insane that this is translated because it still manages to feel so distinct. I wish I spoke Portuguese to know for sure that the translation is faithful but alas I do not so I’ll just have to take the epilogues word for it.
I will be reading more Clarice Lispector that’s for sure!!!
Everything ends, we’re all failures, we age, we die, we’re powerless against nature. Even so, nature brings us power. Failing, aging, and dying do too.
God a few of these stories may have changed my life I think. Theres just a certain few lines that have been circulating through my mind ever since I read them. It really says a lot when a book can do that to me.
I will say there’s definitely a handful of dud stories in the last 30 pages but I’ll let it slide because the good ones are basically perfect. Honestly insane that this is translated because it still manages to feel so distinct. I wish I spoke Portuguese to know for sure that the translation is faithful but alas I do not so I’ll just have to take the epilogues word for it.
I will be reading more Clarice Lispector that’s for sure!!!
August 16, 2011
Combines two story collections, The Stations of the Body and Where You Were at Night. The former a selection of rough and delirious narrations of individual lives. The latter more emotionally intense and rigorous, the narrators seeking ways of being that retain a sense of mystery without withholding secrets.
October 29, 2020
from Soulstorm by Clarice Lispector (translated from the Portuguese by Alexis Levitin):
She had a most strange dream: she dreamed that she saw the Christ of Corcovado -- but what had become of his wide-spread arms? Now they were tightly crossed, and Christ with a disgusted scowl, as if to say: you folks take care of yourselves, I've had it. It was a sin, that dream.
She had a most strange dream: she dreamed that she saw the Christ of Corcovado -- but what had become of his wide-spread arms? Now they were tightly crossed, and Christ with a disgusted scowl, as if to say: you folks take care of yourselves, I've had it. It was a sin, that dream.
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August 19, 2010I haven't read this book yet, but it's on my syllabus for this semester. I was wondering if anyone had this book on tape, CD, or know where I can find a copy online for free. I'd appreciate any help. Thanks!
Displaying 1 - 30 of 46 reviews