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Onderdeel van de reeks(en)Onderdeel van de uitgeversreeks(en)Franse Bibliotheek (Modern) Keltainen kirjasto (323)
Selvbiografisk slğtsroman fra Bretagne, hvori forfatteren fortl̆ler om sin mor, hvis liv var prğet af sorg over dd̜sfald i familien. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)843.914Literature French French fiction Modern Period 20th Century 1945-1999LC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde:
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His second book, of which the New York Times reviewer said “it is clear from the first page that Jean Rouaud is a writer who knows exactly where he is going and how to get there,” focuses on the author’s father. The third book is about the author himself, and this book portrays the mother.
As the portrait develops, you realize why this women has done little more than hover in the periphery of the previous volumes. “She will not read these lines,” For Your Gifts opens, and this becomes a refrain: a lament and an explanation, a prerequisite for the book’s existence.
The impressive thing about this book is that it is sad and touching and only reluctantly recriminating. What difficult person could be more complicated for a son to understand than his own mother? He painstakingly sorts through her past, the circumstances that made her the way she is, the person she must have been before her marriage, how many things she lost and left behind before he ever knew her. It is only then that he approaches the motif that shadows every page of his writing, his father’s death, which left his mother a young widow.
It was hard at first for me to like this book. Rouaud’s tortuous sentences, his unremitting sensitivity to every detail and every possible significance of every combination of details, sometimes tire me. Sometimes I feel like his metaphors are too stetched, but then I realize he could be right. I think his striking comparison of death and grief to birth and infancy may be worth considering.
When the author’s father died suddenly at the age of 41, his mother summoned help by knocking on the wall they shared with their neighbor:
Like it or hate it, this is a pretty good example of the way this writer stretches your view of things.
I eventually even began to admire the person he was taking such pains to faithfully present. This power to gain sympathy should not be surprising from an author who brings such humor and generous curiosity to his study of death and loss.
I have learned that the translator of Rouaud’s first three books died about six months ago but maybe this gives you time to catch up on those until they find a translator for this one. ( )