Everything I Learned From “An Apprenticeship or the Book of Pleasures”

“She was living off a tightness in her chest: life.”

I started reading An Apprenticeship or The Book of Pleasures in an airport filled with blank faces, lives unknown to me. We all waited together for the seemingly endless flights delayed by a snowstorm that had unexpectedly swept through the South. As I pulled out my paperback and began to read, I was immediately thrown into Lori’s frantic, spiraling mind. The grammar reflects this chaos—single sentences run over pages, beginning with a comma and ending with a colon—mirroring the illogical yet realistic flow of Lori’s thoughts. These thoughts come in waves, simultaneously drowning both her and the reader. At first, I was confused but intrigued. Looking back now, I don’t think I would have continued reading if my phone hadn’t been so low on battery and if I had brought another book.

I believe the slim but growing criticism of this book stems from readers giving up too soon. The initial confusion and the overwhelming sadness of the main character, Lori, can be off-putting. She seems incapable of letting anything simply be. However, upon finishing the novel, I realized that this is part of the journey. The book reflects the unfortunate but very real experiences of people all across the world, whether we are in our twenties or have one foot in the grave. The very thing that connects us all is both pain

“Without pain, she’d been left with nothing, lost in her own world and in the wider world without any connection to people.”

Lispector poetically captures the complexity of the human mind—often messy, tangled, and perplexing. On one page, our main character—primary school teacher Loreley—is twisted, downing sleeping pills to quiet her mind and awaken the spiritual presence within her, leading herself astray. The term “self-seducing” means to lead oneself away, deriving from the Latin words se (oneself) and decere (to lead astray). And yet, on the next page, she finds beauty in everyday moments—the street market, the light of dawn spreading across the empty beach, the restless waves.

Clarice Lispector goes beyond words, exploring odd and somewhat eerie thoughts about identity, spirituality, and the unknown. Her writing captures how the simplicity of life can swallow us whole. The bestselling Brazilian author speaks of life and death with a serene fluidity, often blending the two.

An Apprenticeship or The Book of Pleasures is meant to be devoured, leaving its reader satiated yet continuously curious—about the book, about life, about the world around us. Originally published in 1968 and translated into English in 2021, the novel follows Lori’s deepening relationship with the thought-provoking yet emotionally detached college professor, Ulises. Confused by pain, self-pity, and a God that might exist, Lori suspects that life holds a secret meaning and scrambles to understand what everyone else seemingly already knows.

“A human being’s most pressing need was to become a human being.”

In her pain, Lori can be seen as indecisive and self-centered. Her point of view meanders with her uncertainties and insecurities. I learned many lessons through Lori’s endless unanswered questions. At times, I found certain aspects of the novel deeply compelling, while others left me questioning their necessity. Initially, I struggled with the portrayal of Lori’s relationship with her partner, as she seems to place him on a pedestal, treating him as a more complete being. This dynamic initially struck me as unbalanced, but as I continued reading, I realized that Lispector may have intended it as a commentary on growth and self-discovery. He “guides” her through difficult moments, instructing her as though she were a student of life, as if she were in an apprenticeship of existence itself. However, as I continued reading, I realized that this was all part of Lispector’s design. The notion that Lori is lesser is eventually dismantled. Throughout the novel, we see that even Ulises—the bright, knowledgeable man—gets lost within himself when he ponders the question, Who am I? “His voice now was that of just a man.”

Lispector demonstrates, through Lori’s struggles, that pain is an intrinsic part of life. When we dwell in it, it only expands. But when we look beyond it, we encounter something different. Lori experiences this realization when she asks herself who she is and recalls buying coats for her students during the cold months when they had nothing warm to wear, stopping to speak with strangers, finding joy in questioning the unknown, and cherishing her fondness for God—whom she questions yet finds comfort in.

Lori doesn’t know exactly who she is, and I don’t believe anyone fully does. This reminds me of a passage from Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, where the protagonist grapples with the shifting nature of selfhood: “She felt herself very small and insignificant, standing on the edge of infinity, lost in the eternal flux of time.” Like Woolf’s characters, Lori’s identity remains fluid, ever-changing, shaped by her experiences and interactions with the world. Who we are is ever-expanding and ever-changing, as the chemical makeup of our brains shifts, as our bodies and thoughts are influenced by others and, in turn, influence others. Our identities, the presence of God (or lack thereof), the world around us, and even the simplest moments of joy—none of these are definite. They are ever-changing, impossible to fully grasp. They simply are.

“We ought to live despite. Despite, we should eat. Despite, we should love. Despite, we should die. It’s even this despite that spurs us on.”

Lori’s final act of understanding is learning to give herself without insecurity and instead with purpose—to Ulises, to love, and to give love.

“It was holy land because it was the only one on which a human could say while loving: I am yours and you are mine, and we is one.”