Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.
|
Loading... The Woman Who Waitedby Andreï Makine
   No current Talk conversations about this book.  downisthenewup | Aug 17, 2017 |   It is a story about reading the other’s and one’s own emotions and desires in their complexities and contradictions and about failure to do so. It is a wonderful book, apart from one place that is - for me - tainted by the protagonist’s bumbling speculation about the etymology of the word “holm” (p.93). He is young, in his 20s, but occasionally he seems to me drawn slightly simplistic, so in this, his reply, unworthy of an aspiring writer! Also slightly out of character seems to me that Vera puts herself down by calling her own thoughts ‘pedantic’ and ‘etymological humbug’ in the same discussion. Or is it? Perhaps it is deliberate on her part? To hide her intellectual superiority? Nothing is quite as it seems… Après le livre, ne pas d’avant, lisez le commentaire de Patryck Froissart sur site amazon.fr (IX-10) (  )1  MeisterPfriem | Nov 7, 2010 |  )1 Clara53 | Oct 15, 2010 |
 Makine is a storyteller whose native territory is the unrecoverable past. What I find most compelling about his writing is the way he works in a nostalgic mode while dissecting the limits of that nostalgia—resulting in books that are lyrical, analytical, and tremendously sad, all at the same time.
A moving, utterly captivating love story: Romeo and Juliet as if told by Chekhov or Dostoevsky. In a remote Russian village a woman waits, as she has waited for almost three decades, for the man she loves to return. Near the end of World War II, nineteen-year-old Boris Koptek left the village to join the Russian army, swearing to the sixteen-year-old love of his life, Vera, that as soon as he returned they would marry. Young Boris, who with his engineering battalion fought his way almost to Berlin, was reported killed in action crossing the Spree River. But Vera refuses to believe he is dead, and each day, all these years later, faithfully awaits his return. Then one day the narrator arrives in the village, a twenty-six-year-old native of Leningrad, who is fascinated both by the still-beautiful woman and her exemplary story, and little by little he falls madly in love with her. But how can he compete with a ghost that will not die? Beautifully, delicately, but always powerfully, Andre#65533; Makine delineates in masterly prose the movements and madness that constitute the dance of pure love. No library descriptions found. |
Current DiscussionsNonePopular covers
 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)843.914Literature French and related languages French fiction Modern Period 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage: (3.53)
Is this you?Become a LibraryThing Author. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Wikipedia in English (1)
2
Fiabesco? Pure!
Realistico? Sì.
Perché c'è molto spazio nella vita vissuta per l'inverosimile, ed è proprio quello spazio in cui si muove Makine, aiutato dalla latitudine (la città di Arcangelo), dalla storia grande e tragica del suo Paese (l'URSS) e, soprattutto, dalla sua sensibilità MAI strabordante, MAI irragionevole, SEMPRE sottile.
Perla. (