Near to the Wild Heart opens with a scene of the child Joana playing in the garden, making up poems for her father. Joana's wildness and barely suppressed violence, along with her linguistic creativity, are her most notable features. She is frequently compared to animals: over the course of the book Lispector compares her to a bird, a snake, a wildcat, a horse, and a dog. She commits transgressive acts—as a child she throws a book at an old man's head, for example, and as a married woman she leaves her husband, Otávio, and greets the news of his adultery—he has made another woman, his
Frank Buck (animal collector) At the time that Buck met her, she was one of the very few female drama critics in the country, and the only one working in Chicago, where she wrote for the "Chicago Daily News". In his autobiography, Buck described her as "a small woman, plump, with keenly intelligent eyes, the most beautifully white teeth I have ever seen, and a red, laughing mouth", adding that she was "always good-natured." Although their relationship was highly unusual at the time, she being 46 years old to his youthful 17 (a 29-year difference), they married in 1901. In 1911 Buck won $3,500