The Chandelier - Softcover

Lispector, Clarice; Edwards, Magdalena; Moser, Benjamin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0811228711 ISBN 13: 9780811228718

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2019

Synopsis

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.

About this title

Review

One of the twentieth century's most mysterious writers.--Orhan Pamuk (01/22/2018)

Better than Borges.--Elizabeth Bishop (01/22/2018)

Utterly original and brilliant, haunting and disturbing.--Colm Tóibín (01/22/2018)

Virginia's memory of the chandelier as an adult is as strange and ambiguous as the rest of the moments in the novel, deeply introspective and without a clear meaning, but the energy and spiritual wonder of her descriptions make the cryptic writing all the more resonant and spiritually urgent for both her character and her reader.--Mike Broida"The Refugee Woman Who Shaped Brazilian Literature" (03/27/2018)

The revival of the hypnotic Clarice Lispector has been one of the true literary events of the 21st century.--Parul Sehgal (03/27/2018)

It's a shaggy stop-motion masterpiece, plotless and argument-less and obsessed with the nature of thought....Every page vibrates with feeling. It's not enough to say that Lispector bends language, or uses words in new ways. Plenty of modernists do that. No one else writes prose this rich.-- (04/05/2018)

A vulnerable and moving performance--with a heart-stopping payoff....an undeniable quantity of genius.-- (03/27/2018)

Lispector's signature brilliance lies in the minutely observed gradations of her characters' feelings and of their elusive, half-formed thoughts.-- (03/23/2018)

This is a haunting family fable, and will fascinate those seeking a glimpse at Lispector's genius in development.--The Chandelier (01/22/2018)

[L]yrical, sensual, philosophical...gorgeous, unsettling prose...-- (01/22/2018)

About the Author

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 "a truly remarkable writer" (Jonathan Franzen). "Her images dazzle even when her meaning is most obscure," noted the Times Literary Supplement, "and when she is writing of what she despises, she is lucidity itself."

Edition details

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 0811228711
• ISBN 13: 9780811228718
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 320