Archive for the ‘France’ Category

UNFORGIVABLE by Philippe Djian

UNFORGIVABLE is narrated by 60-year-old Francis, a famous author who’s beginning to look like a has-been. His latest novel is going nowhere and his much younger wife, real-estate agent Judith is growing increasingly distant. These troubling elements in Francis’s life are superceded, however, by the disappearance of his daughter Alice.

April 24, 2010 ¡ Judi Clark ¡ No Comments
Tags: ,  Âˇ Posted in: 2010 Favorites, France, Translated, World Lit, y Award Winning Author

BEAT by Amy Boaz

Francis’s story is a familiar one – she’s a housewife who’s bored in her marriage, unfulfilled as a mother at home, and unsure of her own identity. She’s married to reliable, boring, regular Harry. They live in the suburbs of New York City with their two children, seven-year-old Cathy and three-year-old Bernie. The man she was once so attracted to when they married, has become chubby, clumsy, and pathetic in her eyes.

January 11, 2010 ¡ Judi Clark ¡ No Comments
Tags: , , ,  Âˇ Posted in: France, New York City, Thriller/Spy/Caper

THE MOST BEAUTIFUL BOOK IN THE WORLD by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt

TTHE MOST BEAUTIFUL BOOK IN THE WORLD is a collection of eight modern fairy tales. In each of the novellas, a sense of the fantastic intertwines with the mundane, sometimes enchantingly, sometimes crudely but still beguilingly.

The title story, for instance, transports the reader into the midst of a women’s gulag during Soviet rule where the inmates suspiciously eye the newcomer, Olga. She might, after all, be an informer. But the talk of the day is about her hair which is either “horrible” or “magnificent” depending upon the prisoner opining.

November 2, 2009 ¡ Judi Clark ¡ No Comments
Tags: , ,  Âˇ Posted in: Allegory/Fable, France, Short Stories, Translated

THE CORAL THIEF by Rebecca Stott

Well before Charles Darwin presented the theory of evolution in 1859, there were scientists who thought along similar lines—who believed that species “were mutable and that Nature was on the move.” Much like scientists who came even earlier and set forth what were considered equally radical ideas, these people too—many of whom were in France—were labeled godless heretics.

When Daniel Connor, a freshly minted medical student, travels to Paris in July 1815, his professor in Edinburgh had already warned him about these “heretics”—also known as transformists. “Paris is riddled with infidels, Professor Jameson had warned me back in Edingburgh. ‘They are poets, those French transformists, not men of science,’” Connor recalls.

November 1, 2009 ¡ Judi Clark ¡ No Comments
Tags: , , , , ,  Âˇ Posted in: Facing History, France

ANGEL OF THE ASSASSINATION by Graeme Fife

Novelizations of historic events can serve as an exemplary tool for understanding history for those who don’t have the patience to explore original documentation. Graeme Fife’s THE ANGEL OF THE ASSASSINATION, the story of Charlotte Corday: her life and her ultimate sacrifice, is no exception.

September 25, 2009 ¡ Judi Clark ¡ No Comments
Tags: , ,  Âˇ Posted in: Facing History, France

GOURMET RHAPSODY by Muriel Barbery

In Muriel Barbery’s bestselling novel, THE ELEGANCE OF THE HEDGEHOG, Renee Michel, the concierge, disdains the fourth-floor resident, restaurant critic Pierre Arthens, as “an oligarch of the worst sort.” She continues, “Can one be so gifted and yet so impervious to the presence of things?” Yes, apparently he can, and in Barbery’s new “companion” volume, GOURMET RHAPSODY, the curtain of mystery is drawn back from him, and he shows us exactly how he does it!

August 25, 2009 ¡ Judi Clark ¡ No Comments
Tags: ,  Âˇ Posted in: France, Translated, World Lit