Family Ties (short story collection)
Family Ties (Laços de família) is a 1960 collection of thirteen short stories by Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector. It was published after she returned to Brazil from the United States. Some stories were written in the 1940s. For example, O jantar was written in 1943 and first published in 1946 in the Rio de Janeiro newspaper A manhã. Another story, O Crime do professor de matemática, appeared earlier as O Crime in 1945 in another newspaper.
In 1952 Lispector released a shorter volume called Alguns contos (Some Stories), which included these tales plus four others: Love, Mystery in São Cristóvão, The Beginnings of a Fortune, and The Chicken. That edition was published by the Brazilian Ministry of Education and Health. The rest of the stories for Family Ties were finished by March 1955, but publishing rights from the Ministry delayed release for some time.
Many stories focus on ordinary daily life that is suddenly shattered by a strong realization or epiphany. The characters are often housewives trying to balance family life and marriage with a wilder, less controllable side of life—symbolized by a garden, as in Love, where Ana’s orderly life is challenged by the wild Jardim Botânico (Botanical Garden) of Rio de Janeiro.
The collection is regarded as a high point in Brazilian literature. It was praised by two famous Brazilian writers: Fernando Sabino called it outstanding and suggested it might be the best book of stories ever published in Brazil, while Erico Verissimo called it the most important Brazilian short story collection since Machado de Assis.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 10:55 (CET).