The Chandelier
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
In paperback, Clarice Lispector’s explosive and surprising second novel
The Chandelier, written when Lispector was only twenty-three, reveals a very different author from the college student whose debut novel, Near to the Wild Heart, announced the landfall of “Hurricane Clarice.”
Virginia and her cruel, beautiful brother, Daniel, grow up in a decaying country mansion. They leave for the city, but the change of locale leaves Virginia's internal life unperturbed. In intensely poetic language, Lispector conducts a stratigraphic excavation of Virginia's thoughts, revealing the drama of Clarice’s lifelong quest to discover “the nucleus made of a single instant”—and displaying a new face of this great writer, blazing with the vitality of youth.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Never before translated into English, Lispector's mysterious second novel tells the story of two siblings and the secrets that bind them together. As children, sensitive Daniel and precocious Virginia live at the parochial Quiet Farm in the principality of Upper Marsh; Daniel keeps a collection of spiders, and Virginia spends her time making clay figurines. They witness a drowning and form the Society of Shadows to explore the forest around their home and spy on their sister Esmeralda. As a young adult, Virginia leaves the farm and attempts to fit in with a ravishing crew of aesthetes led by the vain Vicente, who becomes her lover but her thoughts are always turning back to Daniel, whose engagement breaks Virginia's heart, leading her to question her identity; she wonders if she isn't like the family's chandelier, above everything and swinging first one way, then the other. Told mainly through Virginia's associative, stream-of-consciousness thoughts, which are occasionally interrupted by dialogue and plot developments, the novel clearly precedes Lispector's artistic breakthrough with books like 1964's The Passion According to G.H. This is a haunting family fable, and will fascinate those seeking a glimpse at Lispector's genius in development.
