A collection of never-before-translated stories by the bestselling author of Suite Française, this is a gorgeous, gemlike volume with the same attention to detail that won Irène Némirovsky so many fans. Written between 1934 and 1942, these ten stories mine the same terrain as her bestselling novels: a keen eye for the details of social class; the tensions between mothers and daughters, husbands and wives; the manners and mannerisms of the French bourgeoisie; and questions of religion and personal identity. Moving from the drawing rooms of pre-war Paris to the lives of men and women in wartime France, here is the beautiful work of a writer at the height of her tragically short career.
"Her latest work to be published in English, Dimanche and Other Stories, affirms her newly won reputation. Her themes are old age and dying…the misery that parents and children inflict upon one another…and the painful, perpetual estrangement of the person forever peering through the curtains…and because Némirovsky was herself born to wealth, she writes about comfortable lives suddenly upended…Yet if her themes are often dark, and if our knowledge of her fate casts its shadow over our readings, her characters and stories are so vibrant and involving that the dominant impression her writing leaves is one of happiness."
"Ten luminous and newly translated stories by Némirovsky, who died at Auschwitz, expose the miseries that undermine happy families…these accomplished tales create worlds full of secrets and treacheries…In this superlative translation, Némirovsky's characters emerge full-fleshed, and her voice remains timeless and relevant."
"Cassandra Campbell offers a fine, straightforward reading of the 10 stories Némirovsky wrote between 1934 and 1942, when she died at Auschwitz. Némirovsky's themes are those of her bestselling Suite Française: the disintegration of France's upper-class society, families, and individuals in Paris before the arrival of the Nazis, and Campbell's portrayals of self-absorbed bourgeois Parisians are well defined without exaggeration and with an impeccable accent."
"Director/narrator Cassandra Campbell's clear, melodious voice is a good counterpart to the text; cool and detached, her voice emphasizes the hypocrisy, disconnectedness, and implicit irony that permeate the stories. She gracefully alters her pitch, pacing, and accent for every new point of view she adopts. Strongly recommended."
"[A] gorgeous collection…Elegant, magnetic, and devastating stories of marriage, mothers and daughters, youth and age, rich and poor. Each faceted, cutting tale exposes the barely concealed resentments and envy underlying marriages desiccated by routinely unfaithful husbands, martyred wives, and shiny, selfish children, especially beautiful daughters who hold their muted mothers in contempt…Némirovsky was an empathic, prescient, and boldly clinical dramatist in the mode of Chekhov, Maupassant, and Colette."
