You are currently browsing the category archive for the 'Miniature Reviews' category.
Just finished this: its a bizarre book. Its just bizarre and perverse for the first 250 pages or so, and then it examines these characters that have been developed. Michel, and Bruno are brothers, who have lived separate, different, but parallel lives. From page 250 onwards, tragedy strikes, and the rest of the book explores their response. It is moving and devastating. Highly recommended, but not for those who can’t persevere.
He says, going back to James Joyce’s Ulysses, which he started getting on for a year ago…
The other day, I picked up a couple of Irène Némirovsky novellas, Le Bal & Snow in Autumn. Némirovsky was born in Kiev to a Jewish Banker in 1903 and died in Auschwitz in 1942. She is posthumously enjoying a renewed interest in her writing, if that’s metaphysically possible, following the rediscovery & translation of her Suite Française.
Le Bal is a delightfully barbed story of an oppressive mother, angst-ridden due to her exclusion from Paris high society and her 14 year old daughter. Némirovsky rapidly and effortlessly conjures up the nuances of their relationship, as well as the backdrop of the Parisian social scene and the influence of other characters. It is only about 40 pages long, and yet it is so carefully and meticulously drawn.
Snow in Autumn tells the moving story of a family fleeing revolutionary Russia, and the expectations and disappointment of their new life in Paris.
