num_pages: 320
description: 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 monologuesinterrupted by odd and jarring fragments of dialogue and actionthe 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 womans life The Chandeliers real drama lies in Lispectors attempt to find the nucleus made of a single instant ... the tenuous triumph and the defeat perhaps nothing more than breathing. The Chandelier pushes Lispectors lifelong quest for that nucleus into deeper territories than any of her other amazing works.
language: None
title: The Chandelier
publisher: New Directions