La haine de la famille [French]

by Catherine Cusset and Cusset. Catherine

Book Overview

«Le football familial, ou comment survivre en famille.Déterminez le défaut le plus irritant de chaque membre de votre famille et attribuez-lui une couleur.Dès que votre père hurlera pour un torchon... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: French
• ISBN: 207076091X
• ISBN13: 9782070760916
• Release Date: January 2001
• Publisher: GALLIMARD
• Length: 228 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.0" x 0.8" x 5.5"

Customer Reviews

Excellent Scenes, Brilliant Characterization

It took me a while to figure out what was going on in this novel. It is not organized chronologically, but focuses on one member of the family in each section and goes back and forth through the years to find the moments that reveal that individual's character. The book tells the story of an upper middle class Parisian family, obsessed with education and professional accomplishment. The women are strong and ambitious and the men are somewhat passive in comparison. The narrator, Marie, is a professor living in the US, like the author. Most of the book deals with her mother, Elvire, a judge, and her grandmother, Simone, who was herself a lawyer even through the war years. The family is of mixed Jewish and Breton Catholic origins. There are lots of conflicts and arguments, justifying the "haine" in the title, but there is much to admire about all of these characters as well. Set in Paris and Brittany, with scenes in America and Algeria as well, the novel covers events in several decades, selecting the truly important periods rather than building an overstuffed generational saga. I read Cusset's novel _Jouir_ after rushing through Michel Houellebecq's three novels which were the first French books I'd read in nearly ten years. I found her language more difficult in that book than I did in this one, but I've been reading steadily in French between the two books. It's been really nice to find authors roughly my age who describe contemporary life in France so vividly.