The Hunters: Two Short Novels

Format:	Paperback 200 pages

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Synopsis

Claire Messud's two exquisite short novels, acclaimed for their subtlety, their insight and their dazzling prose, are destined to become masterpieces of twenty-first-century literature. 'Claire Messud's two brilliant novellas are exquisitely positioned: poised, subtle and perfect, they communicate with each other across expanses of silence like works of art. It is almost startling to encounter writing of this quality ...This is masterly prose modest, authentic, compassionate, interested and majestically complete ...These two small masterpieces reflect and complement one another so as to form something larger, a work of tremendous scope and significance. I can think of few writers capable of such thrilling seriousness expressed with so lavish a gift' Evening Standard 'Messud proves to be as much an accomplished storyteller as an immaculate stylist ...She is a mistress of parenthesis, the telling aside, the unspoken ...With the short novel, Claire Messud, like Alice Munro, has found her ideal form' Daily Telegraph Two short novels of remarkable power and artistry that outweigh works twice or thrice their size ...They achieve their aim quite beautifully' Financial Times 'Messud is an expert storyteller. Her style is precise and illuminating, transforming the mundane into the unusual ...dazzling' Observer

Book details

Published
07/02/2003

Publisher
Picador

ISBN
9780330488150

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UK Kirkus review

The title of A Simple Tale, the first of the two novellas that form this book, is reminiscent of Flauberts short story A Simple Heart, and like that story it is an account of one womans life, from birth to old age. Maria Poniatowski, born in the Ukraine, is still a girl when World War II breaks out. At the age of 15, she is taken by the Germans to a work camp. At the end of the war, in a Displaced Persons camp, she meets her future husband, Lev, a Pole. They emigrate to Canada where they buy a house, find work and raise a son. Maria has a series of cleaning jobs for middle-class Canadian women; Lev dies; Maria doesnt get on with her daughter-in-law. She doesnt see her birth family again or even, it seems, think very much about them. These are the bare bones of the story. Its heart, though, is the sense Messud conveys of loss and loneliness, and the all-too-fast passage of life. Marias anger and frustration is focused on the daughter-in-law because her son is all she has. Marias tale of displacement is as commonplace as it is simple; but it is no less tragic for that. The second story, The Hunters, brilliantly demonstrates Messuds range. In marked contrast to the first novella, its told by an American academic who spends a summer in London to do research for his book on 18th-century attitudes towards death. The narrative style tends towards long sentences, learned references and typically academic convolutions. The academic is befriended, against his will, by Ridley Wandor, the middle-aged care worker living with her mother and their rabbits in the flat below his. Although he dislikes Ridley, he is curious about her, and in particular the fact that her elderly patients keep dying. As the story progresses, the atmosphere becomes increasingly sinister, and the reader feels uneasily that something is amiss, without knowing exactly what. Although on the surface the two stories have little in common, they both deal with loneliness and the difficulty of truly getting to know other people. Messuds remarkable achievement is that she is able to take one theme and to develop it in two entirely different ways. (Kirkus UK)