The Chandelier

As Virginia seeks freedom via creation, the drama of her isolated life is almost entirely internal: from childhood, she sculpts clay figurines with " the best clay one could desire: white, supple, sticky, cold. She got a clear and tender material from which she could shape a world. How, how to explain the miracle ..." While on one level simply the story of a woman's life, The Chandelier 's real drama lies in Lispector's attempt " to find the nucleus made of a single instant". Radically original, T he Chandelier pushes Lispector's lifelong quest for that nucleus into deeper territories than any of her other extraordinary work.