ET TE VOICI PERMISE A TOUT HOMME by Eliette Abecassis

Read in French

Read in January 2013

*****

Synopsis:

Une vertigineuse exploration de la condition d'épouse et de mère juive. 

If you read french I highly recommend this novel.

LA REPARATION by Colombe Schneck

French read

Read in January 2013

*****

Synopsis:

« Je me suis d'abord trompée.Je me disais c'est trop facile, tu portes des sandales dorées, tu te complais dans des histoires d'amour impossible, tu aimes les bains dans la Méditerranée et tu crois qu'une fille comme toi peut écrire sur la Shoah ? Car c'est bien de cela qu'il s'agit. La petite Salomé, dont ma fille a hérité du beau prénom, mon arrière grand-mère, mes oncles et tantes, mes cousins, vivaient en Lituanie avant la guerre. Ils appartenaient à une communauté dont il ne reste rien. »Que s'est-il vraiment passé dans le ghetto de Kovno en 1943 ? Et pourquoi cette culpabilité en héritage ?Dans ce roman-vrai, Colombe Schneck remonte le temps et fouille les mémoires. Jusqu'à la découverte d'une vérité bouleversante.

Biographie de l'auteur

Colombe Schneck, née en 1966, est journaliste et écrivain. La réparation est son cinquième roman.

UNDERGROUND TIME by Delphine de Vigan

4.5 out of 5

• Print Length: 273 pages
• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English

Synopsis:

Every day, Mathilde takes the Metro to her job at a large multinational, where she has felt miserable and isolated ever since getting on the wrong side of her bullying boss. Every day, Thibault, a paramedic, drives where his dispatcher directs him, fighting traffic to attend to disasters. For many of the people he rushes to treat, he represents the only human connection in their day. Mathilde and Thibault are just two figures being pushed and shoved in a lonesome, crowded city. But what might happen if these two souls, traveling their separate paths, could meet?

My view:

First of, I love her prose, her dimensional characters, both so important to a enjoyable read.

This is the story of Mathilde, a highly successful corporate woman, her employer's right hand. What happens when she has been so successful for many years not fearing for her job, important to the supports of her children which she is raising as a single mother following the early death of her husband. No one is indispensable, a fact easily forgotten after years of success and security.  

This is Mathilde's story, her employer's sudden changes, irritability...which remains unexplained,

except for her, who's life is slowly becoming a difficult road.... 

Delphine de Vigan is a very successful French author, she published in English "UNDERGROUND TIME" and "NO AND ME" and soon to come out the price winning "RIEN NE S'OPPOSE A LA NUIT" not yet published in English. 

THE ELEGANCE OF THE HEDGEHOG by Muriel Barbery

3. 3/4

Synopsis:

In a bourgeois apartment building in Paris, we encounter Renée, an intelligent, philosophical, and cultured concierge who masks herself as the stereotypical uneducated “super” to avoid suspicion from the building’s pretentious inhabitants. Also living in the building is Paloma, the adolescent daughter of a parliamentarian, who has decided to commit suicide on her thirteenth birthday because she cannot bear to live among the rich. Although they are passing strangers, it is through Renée’s observations and Paloma’s journal entries that The Elegance of the Hedgehog reveals the absurd lives of the wealthy. That is until a Japanese businessman moves into the building and brings the two characters together. A critical success in France, the novel may strike a different chord with some readers in the U.S. The plot thins at moments and is supplanted with philosophical discourse on culture, the ruling class, and the injustices done to the poor, leaving the reader enlightened on Kant but disappointed with the story at hand.

Muriel Barbery (born 28 May 1969 in Casablanca, Morocco) is a French novelist and professor of philosophy

My view:

I think a lot was lost in translation from French to English, rendering some of the philosophical texts awkward French humour came accross heavy footed.

However this is a delightful narrative, you will find the typical class division which exists in France and on which this book relies for it's tale of a deceptive "concierge".

I did enjoy the book, being French perhaps I noticed where the French version might have been a better choice. If you read in French, choose the French version.

This book was on the New York best selling list for 6 month.