ABSTRACT
The late Brazilian author Clarice Lispector, in her novel The Hour of the Star, tells of a wan, undernourished typist named Macabea, part of Rio’s flotsam. The author should simply read the entirety of this short, achingly beautiful novel into the record, because it sings so well of how we must perceive the fates of those we would normally overlook, those people who seem so rounded by solitude that we fail to see them, much less to listen. Jose Saramago’s novel, like Clarice Lispector’s, gives the supreme advice for how to sing about fate: watch and listen for the nonvisible within ordinary moments and ordinary people. The StoneRaft includes a magical blue thread that attaches Maria Guavaira to her new love, Joaquim Sassa, and she winds the thread into a ball to hold next to her heart to keep outsiders from becoming suspicious.
