A wretched marriage… Unhappiness… A miserable lover… Now she’s alone and lonely… She turns into a dot. She goes on like a caterpillar who, even bruised, fat, and ugly, weaves a cocoon around her to reach her other stage. I had heard of Lispector (albeit vaguely) but didn’t know much about her work until these fresh translations appeared a couple of years ago. Il rumore della pioggia allontana la paura del buio, i rumori del mondo si fanno parole e le parole sono suono.

It’s interesting you’ve picked up on the prose as Lispector would make a striking comparison with Woolf. Even though I spent the best part of 200 pages in Joana’s company, I found it hard to get a grip on her (which is probably why this post reads like a series of fragments). The terms of payment were also chosen by others, one hundred copies for the author to keep/sell from a print run of one thousand. She published her first novel, Near to the Wildheart in 1943 when she was just twenty-three, and the next year was awarded the Graça Aranha Prize for the best first novel.

Given your enjoyment of novels featuring introspection, then I’d say it’s worth giving Lispector a try.

Instead, it is a dive, an attempt to know ourselves, ask little, understand more, and understand what is necessary. After the death of her father, Joana drifts through her days, living only in the present but oblivious to daily circumstance. Why is it so hard to put into words the admiration I felt for the young woman Joana, who with seeming ease understands herself and her incompatibility with other people? But I do like the sound of this one very much – and it’s an interesting angle to take, because in any fiction when we get to the happy ending the story is over.Narrative epiphanies and interior monologue frame the life of Joana, from her middle-class childhood through her unhappy marriage and its dissolution to transcendence, when she proclaims: "I shall arise as strong and comely as a young colt. Din mia de exemplare, Clarice Lispector (10 decembrie 1920 - 9 decembrie 1977) primește o sută și trimite o parte din suta asta criticilor literari din Brazilia.