An Apprenticeship or The Book of Pleasures

About this book

A love story by the great Clarice Lispector that asks: Just how might two people be joined? Lri a primary school teacher is isolated and nervous comfortable with children but unable to connect to adults. When she meets Ulisses a professor of philosophy an opportunity opens: a chance to escape the shipwreck of introspection and embrace the love including the sexual love of a man. Her attempt as Sheila Heti writes in her afterword is not only to love and to be loved but also to be worthy of life itself. Published in 1968 An Apprenticeship is Clarice Lispectors attempt to reinvent herself following the exhausting effort of her metaphysical masterpiece The Passion According to G. H. Here in this unconventional love story she explores the ways in which people try to bridge the gaps between them and the result unusual in her work surprised many readers and became a bestseller. Some appreciated its accessibility; others denounced it as sexist or superficial. To both admirers and critics the olympian Clarice gave a typically elliptical answer: I humanized myself she said. The book reflects that.