In paperback, Clarice Lispectors explosive and surprising second novelThe 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'sthoughts, revealing the drama of Clarices lifelong quest to discover the nucleus made of a single instantand displaying a new face of this great writer, blazing with the vitality of youth.