Clarice Lispector: O lustre (The Chandelier)

The latest addition to my website is Clarice Lispector‘s O lustre (The Chandelier). This is Lispector’s second novel, written when she was in her early twenties, and now published in English more than seventy years after publication in Portuguese. Much of the novel takes place in the head of Virginia, whom we first meet as a girl under the sway of her controlling brother, whom she adores, and her bullying father. In the second part of the novel, she is an adult. Her brother has married and she has a boyfriend, Vicente. However, she is not sure whether she loves him and still lives very much inside in her head. She heads off back home where nothing has changed and still does not know where she belongs. Most of the novel takes place inside her head and we get a detailed and superbly well written story of a complex and insecure girl/woman.

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