“They only think about living in peace; they have everything they need to be happy: work and youth.” Reading a book by Irène Némirovsky means taking care of yourself, loving yourself. For every topic she addresses, she is capable of capturing hidden nuances, shamefully suppressed perspectives, and the most appropriate words. Whether we find ourselves in a wealthy, bourgeois family in the city or at a provincial landowner’s court, Némirovsky is capable of penetrating to...
“Love, my dear, is a feeling of luxury.” The story is about a love that shouldn’t have happened, just as it shouldn’t have died. On one side, we have Yves Harteloup, a wealthy man who has lost much of his wealth and is forced to live like a common clerk in early 1900s Paris, and Denise Jessaint, the young wife of a wealthy businessman, Yves’s comrade in arms during the Great War. The two meet...
“Times have changed and so have men.” Ancient text, first published in France in 1931, of atmospheres and settings now uninhabited for almost a hundred years of dust and cobwebs. The protagonist of the long story is the elderly nurse Tatjana Ivanovna, completely devoted to the Karin family, where she has seen entire generations of boys grow up who quickly became men. Almost as an elderly member of the family, in fact, she will accompany...
