Near to the Wild Heart by Clarice Lispector

Summary (from the publisher): Near to the Wild Heart, published in Rio de Janeiro in 1943, introduced Brazil to what one writer called “Hurricane Clarice”: a twenty-three-year-old woman who wrote her first book in a tiny rented room and then baptized it with a title taken from Joyce: “He was alone, unheeded, near to the wild heart of life.”

The book was an unprecedented sensation — the discovery of a genius. 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.”

Review: Written in stream of consciousness style, this book flows from one moment to another from the perspective of Joana. Orphaned as a child, she is shipped off to an aunt who grows tired of her troubled personality and packs her off to a boarding school. Later, Joana has a complicated marriage. Throughout, she is seeking love and acceptance and understanding of her womanhood and herself. 

This flows in and out of lucidity. There are moments of immense clarity and striking thoughts and other sections that were totally incomprehensible to me and seemed like wild ravings. Joana seems to frustrate others in her life because of her questioning of most things that others take for granted. She feels that speaking a thought gives that thought credence and power to be true: "the moment I try to speak not only do I fail to express what I feel but what I feel slowly becomes what I say. Or at least what makes me act is not, most certainly, what I feel but what I say" (86). She questions a teacher what happens once you're happy; surely the story goes on beyond just happily ever after? She wonders how she can commit to a man without being imprisoned to him: "How could she prevent him from developing his four walls over her body and soul? And was there a way to have things without those things possessing her?" (23). 

It's hard not to wonder if Joana is possibly suffering from a dissociative disorder stemming from the traumatic losses in her childhood. I also wondered what was possibly lost in translation, as I can only imagine stream of consciousness is particularly challenging to translate. Her marriage to Otavio is certainly deeply unhealthy with strained communication. 

This was a difficult read and I'm unsure how to review it as so much of it was difficult for me to follow. Joana was a striking and bright young woman with a difficult path to adulthood that clearly radically altered her relationships and perception of the world. 

Stars: 3