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.