Água Viva (New Directions Books) Paperback – June 13, 2012

The title of this review is what I tell friends when they ask me what this book is about. It's been a bit since I first read it, and I still struggle to formulate even the most basic description. I'm not horrible at giving reviews, and you'd think that with wanting to impress a person I had gone on a couple of dates with who recommended the book to me, I would have me come up with something decent. You'd think. But nope. Not even after a couple of years of reflection. "It's about life and the process of internal rebirth--kinda," I might tell someone (I do love advertising the book in spite of the challenges), and while that IS what it's about, emphasis should be placed on the "kinda," because I'm really just scrambling. EVEN THE SPEAKER is scrambling throughout the book. But I can tell you what reading the book was like: Intense. Though it was a short read, I had to delay the final quarter for a reading session. It prompted existential thinking that hurt in a good way and was overwhelming. It felt like a mildly transformative or spiritual experience, but that sounds almost too dramatic. And yet anything less sounds like an understatement. Anyways, my annotations (the person I was seeing and I were to compare annotations later) were vapid so as to spare the possibility of making incorrect insights (let's just say that if I did look like a poser, they were polite enough to not let it show). I also read the book by a lake right before it stormed during a pivotal time in life--Which is likely half the reason the whole thing felt transformative. But the other half, at the very least, is definitely the product of the book and the marvel that Lispector is. So, go read it by a lake. To add to the experience of whatever you are about to read.P.S. I recently read the forward to this book, and I found it very enlightening regarding my confusion with describing the book. I'd encourage you to check it out, BUT ONLY AFTER YOU HAVE READ IT. Just enjoy it the first time around.

I had a panic attack while reading this book. The hyperventilating, the pacing, the curling up on the floor.Reading Clarice Lispector is mad love, it's convulsive beauty. I think so few people have written amazon reviews of the new translations because it is frightening to talk about her she's so intimate.There are so many great authors, but I have never encountered a better writer. Her sentences are sharp-edged miracles. She is one of the two writers who has made me cry.So many of her sentences are monuments in themselves and would be strange and wonderful secrets in the desert if they did not also stand together-- Her writing is like looking at La Sagrada Familia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagrada_Fam%C3%ADliaHere are a few examples from memory:"Life is a kind of madness that death makes. Long live the dead because we live in them.""The true thought seems to have no author.""This is life seen by life: I may lack meaning but it is the same lack of meaning that the pulsing vein has.""In every word a heart beats.""I am already in the future. This future of mine shall be for you the past of someone dead. When you finish this books cry a hallelujah for me.""All of me is writing to you and I feel the taste of being and the taste-of-you is as abstract as the instant. I also use my whole body when I set the bodiless upon the canvas, my whole body wrestling with myself. You don't understand music: you hear it. So hear me with your whole body. When you come to read me you will ask why I don't keep to painting and my exhibitions, since I write so rough and disorderly. It's because now I feel the need for words-- and what I'm writing is new to me because until now my true word has never been touched. The word is my fourth dimension."And most of all:"It's as if life said the following: and there was simply no following."I recommend her with my whole self.Barthes wrote: "I am only interested in my eyes when they're looking at you."Depending on your mood, Clarice will either sound like the closest thing to truth or the most preposterous self-magnification. She writes on the line between truth and bad taste, and it is a dangerous line, and she goes closer than anyone else: she stands on it and whispers in your ear.It's painful telling you to read her because I am afraid of how you will react. O, she's a universe in a fragile body...

A mesmerizing exploration of consciousness and the essence of being. Lispector's prose flows like water, rich with poetic imagery and profound reflections. While the lack of a conventional plot might be challenging for some, those who appreciate introspective writing will find a treasure trove of wisdom. It requires patience and an open mind, but the rewards are well worth it. Overall, Agua Viva is a beautiful testament to Lispector's genius, making it a must-read for anyone interested in literature that challenges and transcends traditional storytelling. I highly recommend it, though be prepared for a journey that is more about feeling than about following a straightforward narrative.

By pure luck, and incredible good fortune, I came across Clarice's work in a local bookstore, Walden Books, in Oakland, CA. I had never heard of her before and just thumbing through the few titles they had I was immediately struck by the intensely intimate nature of her writing and its mystical qualities. Água Viva is perhaps the most mystical of her books. It is a meditation on the deepest nature of existence, and of the unfolding of her life moment-to-moment. It is not didactic; there is no dharma, no body of beliefs, just her beautiful expressions of her experience of the essence of life. She has been compared to other deeply personal writers but her writing is totally unique; there is no one quite like her. I rarely read a book a second time, but this is a book that I will probably read many time over the course of my life.

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I dont know if I was missing something but it was difficult to get through due to the strange structure of the writing