doug_snyder 's review for:

Near to the Wild Heart by Clarice Lispector

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animal life boils down to this pursuit of pleasure after all. human life is more complex: it boils down to the pursuit of pleasure, to fear of it, and above all to the dissatisfaction of the time in between. all yearning is pursuit of pleasure. all remorse, pity, benevolence, is fear of it. . . . those who deny themselves pleasure, it's because they have an enormous capacity for pleasure, a dangerous capacity--hence even greater fear.

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from then on he had no choice. he had fallen vertiginously from lidia to joana. knowing this he helped himself to love her. it wasn't hard. once she had been distracted. he had called her and the soft, abandoned way she had turned her head had made him fall into himself, plunging into a giddy, dark wave of love.

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her full yet peaceful lips, without twitches, as if they belonged to someone who wasn't afraid of pleasure, who received it without remorse. on what poetry might her life be based?

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she was always. and she'd arrive soon.