Family Ties is a 1960

1960 in literature

The year 1960 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*November 2 – Penguin Books is found not guilty of obscenity in the Lady Chatterley's Lover case in the United Kingdom....

 short story

Short story

A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...

 collection by the Brazil

Brazil

Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...

ian writer Clarice Lispector

Clarice Lispector

Clarice Lispector was a Brazilian writer. Acclaimed internationally for her innovative novels and short stories, she was also a journalist...

.

Short stories

Family Ties consists of thirteen short stories.

• "Daydreams of a Drunk Woman" ("Devaneio e embriaguez duma rapariga")
• "Love" ("Amor")
• "The Chicken" ("Uma galinha")
• "The Imitation of the Rose" ("A imitação da rosa")
• "Happy Birthday" ("Feliz aniversário")
• "The Smallest Woman in the World" ("A menor mulher do mundo")
• "The Dinner" ("O jantar")
• "Preciousness" ("Preciosidade")
• "Family Ties" ("Os laços de família")
• "The Beginnings of a Fortune" ("Começos de uma fortuna")
• "Mystery in São Cristóvão" ("Mistério em São Cristóvão")
• "The Crime of the Mathematics Professor" ("O crime do professor de matemática")
• "The Buffalo" ("O búfalo")

Publication

Though only published in 1960, after the author's definitive return to Brazil from the United States, the first of the stories of Family Ties dated as far back as 1943, when Clarice Lispector wrote "O jantar," later published in the Rio de Janeiro

Rio de Janeiro

Rio de Janeiro , commonly referred to simply as Rio, is the capital city of the State of Rio de Janeiro, the second largest city of Brazil, and the third largest metropolitan area and agglomeration in South America, boasting approximately 6.3 million people within the city proper, making it the 6th...

 newspaper A manhã" in October 1946. Another, "O Crime do professor de matemática", was published, in an earlier version, as "O Crime" in another newspaper.

In 1952, Lispector had published a short volume with these stories and four others ("Love," "Mystery in São Cristóvão", "The Beginnings of a Fortune", "The Chicken") called Alguns contos (Some Stories), published by the Brazilian Ministry of Education and Health. The rest of the stories were completed by March, 1955, but Lispector had trouble publishing them because the Ministry would not release the rights to them, despite Lispector's many requests.

Major themes

Most of the stories focus on a character whose daily life--grocery shopping in "Love", a family gathering in "Happy Birthday"--is shattered by a
sudden epiphany. In this basic structure, they often resemble the later novel The Passion According to G.H.

The Passion According to G.H.

The Passion According to G.H. is a mystical novel by the Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector, published in 1964. The work takes the form of a monologue by a woman, identified only as G.H., telling of the crisis that ensued the previous day after she crushed a cockroach in the door of a wardrobe...

. Reflecting the author's own experience at the time, and as the title suggests, the characters in Family Ties are often housewives struggling to balance the demands of family and marriage with a wilder, less controllable life, symbolized by the experience of Ana in "Love," whose careful life breaks down when she is confronted with the wildness of a garden, in this case the Jardim Botânico

Jardim Botânico

Jardim Botânico is a residential neighbourhood of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, located north of Ipanema and Leblon, just across Lagoa Rodrigo de Freitas and east of Gávea. Jardim Botânico lies in the affluent "Zona Sul" of Rio de Janeiro....

 of Rio de Janeiro.

Literary significance and reception

The stories would eventually be recognized as a high point in Brazilian literature, as two of that literature’s most famous writers saw immediately. Fernando Sabino

Fernando Sabino

Fernando Sabino was a Brazilian writer and journalist.Sabino was born in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, where he lived until he was twenty, when he moved to Rio de Janeiro....

 wrote that “you’ve made eight stories like nobody has come even close to making in Brazil,” adding that the book would be “exactly, sincerely, indisputably, and even humbly, the best book of stories ever published in Brazil”. Erico Verissimo

Erico Verissimo

Erico Verissimo was an important Brazilian writer, born in the State of Rio Grande do Sul. His father, Sebastião Veríssimo da Fonseca, heir of a rich family in Cruz Alta, Rio Grande do Sul, met financial ruin during his son's youth...

 told her: “I haven’t written about your book of stories out of sheer embarrassment to tell you what I think of it. Here goes: the most important story collection published in this country since Machado de Assis,” Brazil’s classic novelist.