The Chandelier

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.

Author: Clarice Lispector
Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
Published: 03/27/2018
Pages: 304
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.15lbs
Size: 8.10h x 5.70w x 1.30d
ISBN: 9780811223133


Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 01/15/2018 pg. 17
Publishers Weekly 01/22/2018

About the Author
Lispector, Clarice: - Clarice Lispector (1920-1977), the greatest Brazilian writer of the twentieth century, has been called "astounding" (Rachel Kushner), "a penetrating genius" (Donna Seaman, Booklist), and "one of the twentieth century's most mysterious writers" (Orhan Pamuk).Moser, Benjamin: - Benjamin Moser, the author of Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector, is the editor of ND's Clarice Lispector translation series, of which this is the ninth volume. For Sontag: Her Life and Work, he won the Pulitzer Prize.Edwards, Magdalena: - Magdalena Edwards is a writer, translator, and actor. Her work has appeared in the Boston Review, the Paris Review Daily, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and the Millions.

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