Synopses & Reviews
When Anna discovers a long letter that her mother Marie wrote, Marie has been dead for some time, and Anna is shocked to learn that her mother disappeared with a secret. The letter is addressed to Marie’s first great love, a much older teacher who she describes as a great dinosaur. In this gripping novel by Florence Noiville, we follow along with Anna as she tries to unravel the mystery of her deceased mother’s past. She takes her questions to her family and to her mother’s friends: Did Marie send the letter? Was it received? Who was this man, and is he still alive? In a desperate search, she tries to piece together the clues.
Attachment explores the obsessive relationship of love, observing both mother and daughter under its magnifying glass. Readers ultimately find Anna and Marie both seeking answers to the same question: What is there inside of us that makes us become so attached to someone we never should have approached? The novel also questions the link between love and writing, the stories that love inspires, and the way in which we construct and own the story of our lives.
Praise for the French edition
“With the discovery of the letters sent (or maybe not) to a lost lover, the reader finds him- or herself bewitched by the sweet melancholy of passing time through the strength and beauty of personal connections and the words used to describe them.”—La Vie
“This study of love—a vast and delicate subject—is told with grace. It resonates long after reading.”—Femina
Review
"A real delight to read with unexpected, tangential detours, an ear for the uncanny and a distilled, bare-boned way of writing."
Review
“It’s a remarkable piece of writing: a work that establishes its own literary style at the same time it probes and studies the styles of others. It’s a collection that will inspire readers to both seek out authors they discover here for the first time, as well as re-read old authors with a new sense of familiarity.”
Review
“Noiville reconstructs and considers the affair, from the points of view of Marie as well as several others, nicely, balancing the discomfiting aspects well with the apparently genuine deeply-felt bond between the lovers. How much that attachment truly meant is also revealed in the novel’s nicely turned conclusion, as Anna learns, in her final foray in search of answers and in adding up the accumulated evidence, more about her mother than she could possibly have expected—a surprise ending, of sorts, that lends the story considerably more haunting weight.”
Review
“The novella challenges and stretches our ethical intuitions, yet, pleasingly, offers no final more dictum.”
Synopsis
This moving fictional memoir begins as a woman heads home after a meeting regarding her inheritance. Rebeling against the legalese uttered by the attorney, her mind drifts back to her childhood and she sees her life with sudden clarity. On the train, she jots down a few notes, which prompt the poetic outpouring of memory and emotion that make up this delicate novel.
Synopsis
This moving fictional memoir begins as a woman heads home after a meeting regarding her inheritance. Rebeling against the legalese uttered by the attorney, her mind drifts back to her childhood and she sees her life with sudden clarity. On the train, she jots down a few notes, which prompt the poetic outpouring of memory and emotion that make up this delicate novel.
The narrators mother looms large in her psyche. Labeled “eccentric” or “Italian,” her mother in fact suffered from what was later found to be manic depression. Without understanding the disease, the family treated the unpredictable ups and downs of her condition as they struck. During periods of paralyzing depression she was hospitalized, and the family felt abandoned. During periods of manic productivity and overdrive, she was a dedicated pharmacist, an exemplary homemaker, and an unusually knowledgeable gardener.
This sparse novel draws the portrait of a grand and unforgettable lady, loving and unable to love at once. Her bequest is as much a material one as it is an emotional one, and, the author surmises as she glances at her own daughters, a genetic one.
Synopsis
Selected from the pages of
Le Monde, the interviews conducted by Florence Noiville are unequaled in literary journalism. In
Literary Miniatures, Noiville captures the words and views of some of the best known writers of the twentieth century, engaging luminaries like Saul Bellow, Nadine Gordimer, Aharon Appelfeld, and A. S. Byatt in revealing dialogue. In this collection, Noiville converses with Don DeLillo, reasons with Adolfo Bioy Casares, passes the time with Milan Kundera, and gently interrogates John Le Carré.
Fluent in many languages, Noiville conducted a number of these interviews in the subject’s native language, engaging these extraordinary writers on their own terms. Inimitably intimate, the interviews are a window through which readers can come to know the writers behind some of the greatest works of literature of the last one hundred years. Sure to delight lovers of literature and biography, this book is the perfect expression of the art of the interview and a priceless artifact for enthusiasts and scholars alike.
Synopsis
When Anna discovers the long letter that her mother, Marie, wrote, Marie has been dead for some time; she disappeared with her secret. The letter is addressed to her first great love, a teacher who was much older than she, an old ‘dinosaur. Did Marie ever send the letter? Did the man ever receive it? Anna decides to question her family and her mothers former friends, in an attempt to understand how her mother became attached to that man. Who was the man whom she loved? Is he still alive? Will finding him help Anna know a mother who left her when she was 14?
From this relationship of obsessive love observed under the magnifying glass from various points of view, both the mother and daughter try to answer the same question: What is there inside us that makes us become attached to someone whom we should never even have approached? Attachment also questions the link between love and writing, the stories that love inspires, and the way in which we construct and own the story of our lives.
About the Author
Florence Noiville, author and journalist, has been a staff writer for
Le Monde since 1994, and editor of foreign fiction for
Le Monde des Livres, the paper’s literary supplement. She is the author of several books for children, a biography of the Nobel Prize Laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer, a partly autobiographical essay, and two novels. Noiville lives in Paris.
Teresa Lavender Fagan is a freelance translator living in Chicago; she has translated numerous books for the University of Chicago Press and other publishers.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Translators Note Teresa Lavender Fagan
Introduction Florence Noiville
The Salvation of Sleep
Aharon Appelfeld
The Hermit of Vermont
Saul Bellow
Reflecting on the Secrets We Keep
Neil Bissoondath
Conversations with Ghosts
A. S. Byatt
Ficiton Helps Us See and Question Ourselves
Don DeLillo
The Iberindian
Carlos Fuentes
‘I Prefer to Trust in Reality
Carlo Ginzburg
The ‘White African
Nadine Gordimer
Ten Words
Yu Hua
Words Full of Sound
Kazuo Ishiguro
Betting on Life
Imre Kertész
Only the Work Matters
Milan Kundera
Triple Agent
John le Carré
Literature Born of a Prison Cell
Carlos Liscano
One: Literature is Not a Diversion
Mario Vargas Llosa
Two: Public Healer
Mario Vargas Llosa
We Have All Experienced Betrayal
Javier Marías
‘Without Writing, I am Lost
Toni Morrison
Overly Dangerous Zones
Harry Mulisch
‘I Dont Trust Eternity
Herta Müller
Soaring Alongside the Divine
Cees Nooteboom
We Are Made of Thousands of Others
Jean-Bertrand Pontalis
‘Nostalgia Makes Me Laugh
Sempé
Studying the Inner Movements of Awareness
Ersi Sotiropoulos
‘I Write Because I Want to Know
William Trevor
The Old Robber
Tomi Ungerer
Substance
Thanassis Valtinos
Were All Actors on a Stage
Enrique Vila-Matas
Works Cited