Near to the Wild Heart by Clarice Lispector

The minimal encounter with other women (or lack thereof) are somehow fraught with negative feelings that there is a sense of isolation in Joana’s thoughts and views which are so often interspersed with others’. But the dissatisfaction of marriage and relationships glare and glimmer without hope and further tumbles down when indifference shadows them into obscurity and neglect. It rides the same train of life’s cyclic clichés. And perhaps like most of us drift from one “life milestone” to another: at times to be in touch, tethered with our own being, on others to be in an “acceptable” headspace of living.

An enduring dissatisfaction pervades throughout the novel where the unconventional woman in focus, Joana, is anchored down by existential anguish. ( )Īs this slips in and out of consciousness it stays at the bottom of a dreary pool of misery. Near to the Wild Heart captures what those characters are probably thinking the entire time, and which neither the director nor the actors are able to convey effectively, because really this sort of thing does work a lot better in a novel than in a film. There's a certain type of French film, where the actors sit there in silence, absolutely still, staring at each other or studiously ignoring one other, and one says 'oui' and five minutes later the other says 'non', and after ten or fifteen minutes the woman says 'where did it all go wrong' or 'what became of us', and then after looking off into space while finishing the world's longest-lived cigarette the man says 'you bitch'. It is probably best to read the book in one sitting, or not at all. So while the prose is a pleasure to read, as well as being Deep and Meaningful, it provides no incentive to keep reading, and the book thus gathers dust (or whatever the Kindle equivalent is).

More accurately, it is a journey on which self-discovery happens every page or few, and the narrative ends rather abruptly, without a realization or conclusion of any import. It is all of those things, yet somehow unsatisfying - a journey of self-discovery which never reaches its destination. This is one of those books that will be described as evocative, introspective, vivid.

Near to the Wild Heart by Clarice Lispector