The 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's thoughts, revealing the drama of Clarice's lifelong quest to discover "the nucleus made of a single instant"-and displaying a new face of this great writer, blazing with the vitality of youth.