Near to the Wild Heart (Penguin Modern Classics)

A slim novel, it is nevertheless challenging, beautifully written – the perspective changes throughout, and is impressionistic, dreamlike and introspective. I was reminded particularly of Virginia Woolf – it being a very long time since I attempted James Joyce (one novel was enough). The central character; Joana continually asking herself philosophical questions – questioning her relationship with everything including objects around her. Much, I think is therefore required of the reader, and I’m certain some of it went over my head. Lispector’s prose is glorious, and even those more difficult sections are a joy to read. The novel tells the story of Joana, from her childhood, alone with her father, writing him poetry, through the changes that come to her childhood and adolescence, to her marriage to Otávio, through to her decision to make her own way in the world. Even as a child Joana is free thinking and unusual. Lispector’s descriptions of Joana’s thought processes and interactions with the world around her are quite wonderful.

This was my reading groups pick of the month - It is quite short and I'm glad as I needed to read it a couple of times to make sense of it as the narrative jumps all over the place. Very descriptive, I can appreciate it is a great classic work but I don't love it. Definitely more an academic work than a holiday read.

I bought this because it had a good review in one of the Sunday papers, and I thought the author had in interesting name.When I started to read it, I couldn't believe it's brilliance. It's an internal psychological monologue, where a young woman reflects on the things around her in Brazil. She's diocciated and remote from everything, and it's as if she experiences the world through a a foot thick filter of her own consciousness. She's difficult and unpredictable to others, but interprets the world through her own senses and acts innocently on her own instincts.There's no plot to speak of, but the images and writing jump off every page.This a kind of Letranger by Camus, but from a female point of view, and infinitely better written. Restored my faith in literature, even if it is 70 years old. Hurricane Clarice we salute you

Whether you enjoy this book will depend upon what you hope to get from it.It is, indeed, stream of consciousness writing, like Joyce et al. If you appreciate Joyce, then this book is probably for you. If, like many, you find yourself struggling to deal with the density of such writing you might find yourself rebounding from it.Books like these are in many ways hardly ‘novels’. There is little narrative, any story is cut into snippets giving little obvious continuity to the writing.To get through this sort of book, you might find yourself applying a ten-page-a-day rule, just to ensure you come through at the far end without simply giving up.Ultimately this kind of writing can feel very frustrating for the reader. You wonder, too, whether a translation, as this is, from Portuguese, however good, isn’t part of the problem.Viewed in part as surrealist writing, writing which comes from the unconscious, from and revealing the dream state, this work does have some validity. Certainly some extended passages in this book feel as though they could come out of a dream. And from its time, and place, this is evidently groundbreaking work and would have been culturally exciting for those coming across it; there is a strong historical context.

Why waste time reading any review when you could give that time to Lispector herself? Utterly original, profoundly moving, her greatness is there with Joyce, Woolf, Hesse.Why she is almost unknown in the anglosphere is incomprehensible. if she had written no more than the last chapter of this book - comparable to the Molly Bloom monologue yet actually surpassing it - she would be among the greats of modernity. Fortunately she has given us more but this first book of hers is an explosion, a revelation. Read it and be changed!

A woman remembers fragments of her life, with raw detail and emotion, elliptical and poetic, powerful and hypnotic, Lispector writes intensely, beautifully, with insight and conviction, this is art but it's a page-turner as well. Stunning.

I found Near to the Wild Heart very good, an intelligent and a surprisingly mature work by such a young author. At the same time I would not regard it as exceptional since there are comparable excellent works by equally young writers/poets, such as Radiguet's Count D'Orgel, Le Grand Meaulnes by Alain/Fournier, Lautreamont's Maldoror, and others. Hence in my opinion her greatness better be measured by criteria pertaining to the Latin American lit. rather than those of the modern literature as such.

It was a gift for a friend who said he loved it!!

O livro é lindo, mas 0 pra entrega e pra qualidade da capa. É aquelas que se vc passar a unha, arranha. Não vale a pena comprar, pq com o tempo a capa vai se desfazer inteira. E veio parecendo livro usado. Terrível. Com certeza não vale a pena o preço.

As a first time reader of Clarice Lispector, I found it very difficult to understand where this book comes from. The book offers no context or insight about the author (at least for the Indian audience, who have no clue about Brazil's history, leave alone a writer who became famous only after she left Brazil). It painfully took me months to continue reading a book which only delves into the inner thoughts of the protagonist Joanna, with very little information on the background or the surroundings.I had to stop reading the book and figure out more about the writer, Brazilian literature, the Jews in the country and after going through many reviews I realised that I wasn't the only one to find this book difficult. It is said that the meaning was lost in the English translated text, so perhaps I am missing out on a lot of things.Brilliant book for those who'd like to go deep into introspection about morality, their own thoughts and the ones with existential crises.

kann so bereichernd sein.Clarice Lispector war ungewöhnlich schön, besaß eine ganz besondere Anziehungskraft und führte ein außergewöhnliches Leben.Der Text ist so modern geschrieben, nicht zu fassen, dass dies schon vor einem halben Jahrhundert in Südamerika geschehen ist.Warum nur, war sie mir so lange völlig unbekannt? Wäre sie ein Mann gewesen, glaube ich gern, hätte das nicht passieren können. Dieses Mädchen war mindesten so ungebändigt wie ein junger Hemingway.

Belle édition. Traduction très bonne, les Éditions New Directions sont vraiment de qualité. Si vous voulez lire en anglais ou ne trouvez plus la version originale en portugais du Brésil, n'hésitez pas, il s'agit d'un classique de la littérature contemporaine universelle, à mon sens.