"It's the best one," Clarice Lispector remarked on the occasion of the
publication of The Apple in the Dark: "I can't define it, how it is, I
can only say that it's much better constructed than the previous ones."
A book in three chapters, with three central characters, The Apple in
the Dark is in fact highly sculpted, while being chiefly a metaphysical
book, and in this stunning new translation, the novel's mysteries and
allegories glow with a fresh scintillating light.
Martim, fleeing from a murder he believes he committed, plunges into the
dark nocturnal jungle: stumbling along, in a state of both fear and
wonder, eventually he comes to a remote, quiet ranch and finds work with
the two women who own it. The women are tranquil enough before his
arrival, but are affected by his radical mystery. Soaked through with
Martim's inner night (his soul is in the darkness where everything is
created), the novel vibrates with his perpetual searching state of
vigil. Often he feels close to an epiphany: "for the first time he was
present in the moment in which whatever is happening is happening." Yet
such flashes flicker out, so he's ever on the watch for "life to take on
the dimensions of a destiny."
In an interview, Lispector once said: "I am Martim." As she puts it in
The Apple in the Dark: "All I've got is hunger. And that unstable way
of grasping an apple in the dark--without letting it fall."
