She’s a cold viper, Alberto, there’s no love or gratitude in her. Joana’s aunt, however, remains fearful of the young girl whom she likens to a ‘little demon.’ From a young age, Joana demonstrates a capacity for free thinking and for dazzling those who come into contact with her. Joana’s childhood is a difficult one, and when her parents die she is sent to live with her aunt and uncle.

As soon as he leaves the house for the day, Joana is transformed she focuses on herself and returns to the thread of her early years. We are introduced to Otávio in the second chapter. That said, reflections on Joana and Otávio’s relationship are threaded through the novel thereby acting as a kind of spine to the story. The novel is divided into two parts: the first section delves into key moments from Joana’s childhood while the second considers the nature of her marriage. The focus of Near to the Wild Heart is Joana, a young woman who finds herself in a loveless marriage with her husband, Otávio.

Nevertheless, the book’s epigraph and style led certain critics to compare Lispector’s work to that of Joyce, Virginia Woolf and other modernist writers. With this in mind, what better place to start than her debut novel, Near to the Wild Heart, first published in 1943 when Lispector was just twenty-three years old? The book’s title and epigraph come from James Joyce’s novel, Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, but Lispector only discovered Joyce once she had finished writing Near.

I’ve been meaning to read Clarice Lispector ever since the new translations of her work appeared in 2012.

Wild at heart play books