Les Vierges et d'autres nouvelles

by Irène Némirovsky, Olivier Philipponnat (Editor)

Ce livre présente au lecteur contemporain douze nouvelles de Irène Némirovsky : «Film parlé», «Écho, Magie», «En raison des circonstances», «Les cartes», «La peur», «L'inconnue», «La voleuse», «Les revenants», «L'ami et la femme», «La grande allée», «Les vierges». Il sont douze portraits de femmes dans la France de l’entre deux guerres, différentes, mais narrés avec ironie, douceur et justesse.
Morte à Auschwitz, en 1942, auteur à succès dans la France des années 1930 mais oubliée après la Seconde Guerre mondiale, Irène Némirovsky est le seul écrivain à qui le prix Renaudot ait été décerné à titre posthume, en 2004, pour son roman inachevé Suite française.

Genres: Short Stories, Classics, 20th Century

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Irène Némirovsky was born in Kyiv in 1903 into a successful banking family. Trapped in Moscow by the Russian Revolution, she and her family fled first to a village in Finland, and eventually to France, where she attended the Sorbonne.

Irène Némirovsky achieved early success as a writer: her first novel, David Golder, published when she was twenty-six, was a sensation. By 1937 she had published nine further books and David Golder had been made into a film; she and her husband Michel Epstein, a bank executive, moved in fashionable social circles.

When the Germans occupied France in 1940, she moved with her husband and two small daughters, aged 5 and 13, from Paris to the comparative safety of Issy-L’Evêque. It was there that she secretly began writing Suite Française. Though her family had converted to Catholicism, she was arrested on 13 July, 1942, and interned in the concentration camp at Pithiviers. She died in Auschwitz in August of that year. --Penguin Random House

Reviews

[Teresa · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5
Némirovsky's short stories are always enjoyable. The main character is usually a woman, of varying ages, situations, wealth, and social position. And this "ensemble" portrays French society of the interwar-period (although some of the stories take place in the beginning of the Second World War) quite accurately.
I've always enjoyed her writing style, so meticulous, visual, and showing with words and actions her character's nature. And how human they are, how weak, and vulnerable, and contradicting they are. How they forget, and then remember, and modify their memories in order to survive in a life that hasn't been exactly their choice, but more of a succession of incidents that they tried to manage the better they could.
My favourite story was "Film parlé" ("Talking movie"). It is not exactly a script, but the way she describes close-ups in a character's figure, or the transition from one space to another (more like a "scene" to another, seriously, there's one where she clearly describes a pearl necklace and then she swiftly transforms it into another room) that is quite cinematographic.

[Silvia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well, I do not know if the novel I read was part of these ones. I read it in Italian, under the title Due, its original title being Deux. It was published in 1939 and advertised as the first "love" novel by Irene Nemirovsky. But GoodReads does not have any "Deux" by itself, and I want to write about this book. So here I am.
I have been only slightly aware of the frenzy surrounding the discovery of Nemirovsky's wartime unfinished work, Suite francaise, and I sort of fell into Deux because I received it as a present. And, well, also because in the Italian edition it is an absolutely marvelous object, published by Adelphi, the cover a faded pink (rosa antico) that stands out and warms your hands.
But then it is the story that takes over, that overwhelms. Reading it feels like an indulgence, a pause, a lightning from a different epoch.
"Two" is really about three, or four, couples, and about youth passions, and about what passion becomes if you follow these couples long enough along their inevitably prosaic lives. No, it's not very optimistic. But what a jewel, Quel regal. By the time I got to the penultimate chapter, the novel had come full circle. The protagonists' children play at home, and we witness in their childish play the first stirrings of the same passion, and restlessness, that captured the reader at the beginning, when those emotions belonged to their now remote, and emotionally frozen, parents. There is something so irrevocable and yet so light in the route she takes in telling us these Parisians' lives, that I was left in complete awe.

[Fabiola · Rating 3 out of 5]

Il voto reale è più o meno 3 e ½*.

Contiene:
- Film parlato: 4*;
- Eco: 2 e ½*;
- Magia: 3 e ½*;
- A causa delle circostanze: 4-*;
- Le carte: 3+*;
- La paura: 3-*;
- La sconosciuta: 2 e ½*;
- La ladra: 3*;
- I fantasmi: 3 e ½*;
- L'amico e la moglie: 4=*;
- La Grande Allée: 3*;
- Le vergini: 4*.

Lettura gradevole e veloce; il modo di raccontare della Némirovsky continua a confermarsi bello e piacevole. I racconti non mi sono piaciuti tutti allo stesso modo e qualcuno di essi non si è aggiudicato un voto più alto solo perché mi ha lasciata insoddisfatta nel finale.
Tematiche ancora interessanti che continuano a tenere vivo il mio desiderio di leggere molto altro di questa scrittrice!

[Rita · Rating 4 out of 5]

CON LE VISCERE

"Una donna non dimentica nulla, e anzi ha una memoria molto più tenace e crudele di quella maschile, perché non ricordiamo solo con la mente, ma con le nostre stesse viscere."

★★★★✰: "Film parlato", "Magia", "Le carte", "La paura", "La sconosciuta", "La ladra", "L'amico e la moglie", "Le vergini"
★★★✰✰: "Eco", "A causa delle circostanze", "I fantasmi"
★★✰✰✰: "La Grande Allée"

[Kosea · Rating 4 out of 5]

Très élégant recueil de nouvelles qui dépeint toujours des destins de femmes au début du XXe siècle. Irène Némirovsky fut l'une des rares femmes de lettres reconnue de son temps, même si à l'approche de la guerre et de l'antisémitisme grandissant, elle devint peu à peu radiée des cercles littéraires.
Ce qui fait la particularité de ses textes, c'est la manière avec laquelle l'autrice joue avec le destin de ses femmes et ainsi avec le lecteur qui ne sait plus sur quel pied danser pour deviner la fin. Le recueil explorant des nouvelles sur plus de 10 ans de publication, offre aussi une diversité de styles, ce qui est bienvenue dans les recueils de nouvelles où l'on a parfois tendance à se noyer entre les histoires.

[Gaia · Rating 4 out of 5]

The short story Les Vierges, in particular, is a real masterpiece.

[Pascale · Rating 1 out of 5]

Very mediocre stuff, only of value to fans or scholars of Némirovsky.

[Livietta · Rating 3 out of 5]

Molto bello, forse da 5 stelline, il primo racconto. Alcuni degli altri invece non lasciano assolutamente il segno. Il racconto che da il titolo alla raccolta colpisce molto per lo stile effettivamente cinematografico: la storia è raccontata attraverso una sequenza di scene che danno anche un ritmo incalzante alla narrazione.

[Peter Odel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I en kulisse af Paris, jazz og dekadent liv stiller Irène Némirovsky spørgsmålet om hvad det gode kvindeliv er… - Læs min anmeldelse på peterodel.com