Les Portes du jour

Portrait de L'Auteur En Femme Ordinaire

by Anne Cuneo, Lydia Cuneo (Avec)

French

357 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1980

About the author

Anne Cuneo (6 September 1936 – 11 February 2015) was a Swiss journalist, novelist, theatre and film director and screenwriter.

She was born in Paris of Italian parents, but studied in Lausanne. Her first novel came in 1967 and was called Gravé au diamant. In 1979 she received the lesser prize of the Schweizerische Schillerstiftung and by 1987 she worked for Télévision Suisse Romande.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Susan Harris · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was presented in French but we discussed it in English, then someone read two of Cuneo's beautiful poems in French. :) Half of the group find Cuneo unlikeable, narcissitic, self-centered, whiny, etc, and the other half found this memoir, which she wrote for her daughter and never dreamed that it would become her best-selling book, was interesting, informative and touching. She had a really difficult early life; her well-to-do Italian family was exiled in Paris before WWII, then they had to return to Italy, where her father, who was a partisan, was assassinated in the final days of the war. She came to Lausanne with her mother, who did really menial work to survive, while Anne had a very rough life in a Catholic boarding school. I haven't read anything else of Cuneo's (yet), but I suppose I really must, since I live here where she grew up, and because she is considered to be THE writer of the Suisse-Romande. Her poetry is really delightful.