This is a fictional account of a woman’s attempt to escape from conventional time and exist instead in a perpetually renewing “this instant-now”. Lispector pursued this same seemingly impossible aim through a number of books – getting closer and closer to the confused and thrilling feeling of fully conscious aliveness. Água Viva is where she succeeds most amazingly.
A meditation on the nature of life and time, Água Viva (1973) shows Lispector discovering a new means of writing about herself, more deeply transforming her individual experience into a universal poetry. In a body of work as emotionally powerful, formally innovative, and philosophically profound as Clarice Lispector’s, Água Viva stands out as a particular triumph.
This is a fictional account of a woman’s attempt to escape from conventional time and exist instead in a perpetually renewing “this instant-now”. Lispector pursued this same seemingly impossible aim through a number of books – getting closer and closer to the confused and thrilling feeling of fully conscious aliveness. Água Viva is where she succeeds most amazingly.
— Toby Litt, The Guardian
Her images dazzle even when her meaning is most obscure, and when she is writing of what she despises she is lucidity itself.
— The Times Literary Supplement
This is a book that, like a good painting, can be picked up anywhere and that will continue to reward renewed contact over months and years of acquaintance.
— Scott Esposito, Barnes & Noble Review
Água Viva is like nothing else you’ve ever read, and, like the other Lispector re-editions, reading it is an experience you won’t want to miss.
— The Coffin Factory
Brilliant and unclassifiable…Glamorous, cultured, moody, Lispector is an emblematic twentieth-century artist who belongs in the same pantheon as Kafka and Joyce.
