A deeply revealing, intimate work that fully demonstrates the author’s exquisite writing process.
A new translation of the diary on which the recent Nobel Prize winner based her 1991 novel, Simple Passion.
In a narrative that reveals Ernaux’s surgical process of inward observation, she chronicles an all-consuming yearlong affair with a Russian diplomat whom she met during a literary junket in Leningrad in the fall of 1988. Known for her meticulously hewn autobiographical work since her first novel, Cleaned Out, appeared in 1974, Ernaux published this diary in France in 2001. In the preface, the author asserts that, unlike the fictionalized version of the affair in Simple Passion, her diary contains something “raw and dark, without salvation, a kind of oblation.” Indeed, the text is a well-rendered yet agonizing, claustrophobic journey. Ernaux writes about how she and “S,” more than a decade older than her and married, met in Paris, where he was stationed in a cultural capacity. Readers watch as the narrator waits in self-abnegation for his call, anticipating the moment they will meet again. Everything else in the world falls away amid their passion, and Ernaux offers tantalizing details about S: tall and handsome, given to drinking too much vodka and waxing nostalgic about Brezhnev and Stalin, and, though a wonderful lover, somewhat comical as he won’t remove his socks. The author is consistently clear about her level of devotion during this time: “I feel no sense of caution or restraint, nor do I have any doubts, finally. Something has come full circle. I commit the same errors as in the past but they are no longer errors. There is only beauty, passion, desire.” Ernaux also discusses the influence of Simone de Beauvoir and notes how her own work is full of “egocentric suffering. Yet I know that it is through this layer of suffering that I communicate with the rest of humanity.”
A deeply revealing, intimate work that fully demonstrates the author’s exquisite writing process.Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-64421-219-6
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Seven Stories
Review Posted Online: Oct. 9, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
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