Welcome to Litsy!

Now, for the first time in English we have Clarice Lispector�s second novel�a radical part of what made her a Brazilian legend Fresh from the enormous success of her debut novel Near to the Wild Heart, Hurricane Clarice let loose something stormier with The Chandelier. In a body of work renowned for its potent idiosyncratic genius, The Chandelier in many ways has pride of place. �It stands out,� her biographer Benjamin Moser noted, �in a strange and difficult body of work, as perhaps her strangest and most difficult book.� Of glacial intensity, consisting almost entirely of interior monologues�interrupted by odd and jarring fragments of dialogue and action�the novel moves in slow waves that crest in moments of revelation. As Virginia seeks freedom via creation, the drama of her isolated life is almost entirely internal: from childhood, she sculpts clay figurines with �the best clay one could desire: white, supple, sticky, cold. She got a clear and tender material from which she could shape a world. How, how to explain the miracle ...� While on one level simply the story of a woman�s life, The Chandelier�s real drama lies in Lispector�s attempt �to find the nucleus made of a single instant ... the tenuous triumph and the defeat, perhaps nothing more than breathing.� The Chandelier pushes Lispector�s lifelong quest for that nucleus into deeper territories than any of her other amazing works.