A review by oldmansimms
The Chandelier by Clarice Lispector
3.0
Reading this, I had a hard time figuring out if I thought Clarice Lispector was an incredible writer, or a terrible one. On the one hand, from sentence to sentence her writing is extraordinary, unique, almost revelatory at times, a voice like no other (e.g. He would hover for an instant, drifting, his thinking intersecting with hers like the bow over the violin string, light sparks of insight and surprise unmaking themselves in the air). On the other, I almost never had any idea what was going on. Her writing is dazzling, but it makes the plot and characters virtually impenetrable, and she seems to have never met an adjective or adverb (or adverbial "with [noun form of adjective]") she didn't like.
She also has some weird tics -- an unusual tendency to use an adjective where an adverb would normally go (as in "standing silent" instead of "standing silently"), which honestly I liked, stylistically; and very strong attachments to certain words, such as "almost", "brutality", and "rage". Just for fun I found the total count of these words, and compared them to the frequency in other e-books I currently have to hand (Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson, The Little Sleep by Paul Tremblay and How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue):
"Almost"
- The Chandelier - 272, or one every 1.18 pages
- Gardens of the Moon - 101, one every 7.6 pages
- The Little Sleep - 22, one every 13.1 pages
- How Beautiful We Were - 10, one every 38.4 pages
"Brutal" (or brutality, brutally)
- TC - 19, or one every 16.8 pages
- GOTM - 9, one every 85.8 pages
- TLS - 0
- HBWW - 0
"Rage" (or outrage, enrage)
- TC - 34, or one every 9.4 pages
- GOTM - 30, one every 25.7 pages
- TLS - 0
- HBWW - 3, one every 128 pages
It'd be one thing if this book was really about rage and brutality in ways that those others aren't, but it isn't really (and the absurd frequency of "almost" is subject-matter-agnostic). Just bizarre.
I have to remember that Lispector was extremely young when she wrote this book (26 when it was published). Her talent is unquestionable, so I'm interested to see whether the plots of her books became less impenetrable as she matured.
She also has some weird tics -- an unusual tendency to use an adjective where an adverb would normally go (as in "standing silent" instead of "standing silently"), which honestly I liked, stylistically; and very strong attachments to certain words, such as "almost", "brutality", and "rage". Just for fun I found the total count of these words, and compared them to the frequency in other e-books I currently have to hand (Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson, The Little Sleep by Paul Tremblay and How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue):
"Almost"
- The Chandelier - 272, or one every 1.18 pages
- Gardens of the Moon - 101, one every 7.6 pages
- The Little Sleep - 22, one every 13.1 pages
- How Beautiful We Were - 10, one every 38.4 pages
"Brutal" (or brutality, brutally)
- TC - 19, or one every 16.8 pages
- GOTM - 9, one every 85.8 pages
- TLS - 0
- HBWW - 0
"Rage" (or outrage, enrage)
- TC - 34, or one every 9.4 pages
- GOTM - 30, one every 25.7 pages
- TLS - 0
- HBWW - 3, one every 128 pages
It'd be one thing if this book was really about rage and brutality in ways that those others aren't, but it isn't really (and the absurd frequency of "almost" is subject-matter-agnostic). Just bizarre.
I have to remember that Lispector was extremely young when she wrote this book (26 when it was published). Her talent is unquestionable, so I'm interested to see whether the plots of her books became less impenetrable as she matured.