How do you recommend a book that you cannot explain? The only words that can describe the book are its own. Clarice Lispector’s novel The Chandelier embodies this paradox.
A novel about experience that is more of an experience than a novel, I don’t leave it thinking about plot or characters but rather about language, teetering on the edge of intimating the ineffable instants of interiority. I want to describe this to someone, but my mouth opens and no words come out. I want to write about it, but my fingers type sentences that don’t make sense.
This again is the paradox - the only words that can describe the book are its own. And those words will transfix you.