My French Life™ BOOK CLUB - You Will not Have my Hate: YOU WILL NOT HAVE MY HATE, A PARADOX?

[Jacqueline]

Carolyne Lee I've started reading the French edition. The prose style is exquisite, the subject matter heartbreaking.
Jacqueline Dubois hat is exactly Carolyne the intended first discussion topic I had in mind. How would you translate 'problématique de départ'? thesis statement ?
Carolyne Lee I would say it is more the intrinsic paradox or dilemma--how to render something so terrible in beautiful prose.
Jacqueline Dubois I was asking about the questions we ask at start to illustrate a point in an essay for example and in general. But now as you put together terrible and beautiful, could the intrinsic paradox also be called an oxymoron? the title also evokes this opposition.
Carolyne Lee Yes I think it is a type of oxymoron, although not so incongruous in this literary context as oxymorons usually are, since there are many works telling of the death of people close to the author yet written so beautifully, so we don't feel it is incongruous so much, although we still reel from the emotional weight of it. Joan Didion's book about the death of her husband and daughter does this too, although in a diffferent way to this author. There is also an Australian author who wrote about the loss of his family many years ago in his book 'Year One', of which this French book reminds me somewhat.
Jacqueline Dubois I have not read it yet but since I saw author in 'La Grande Librairie', I know that most recent novel by Daniel Pennac 'Mon Frère' (April 2018) also deals beautifully and poetically with the loss of a loved one. We can't envisage comparing pains, however, in our Western world, where last war was waged 70 years ago, terrorist attacks and killings are a totally brutal, incomprehensible way to cope with mourning. In that sense , I believe this book is among a few only.
Anne Beckinsale I have started reading the translated version and I have been enrhralled by the beautiful writing style also. I was wondering if it would read the same in French or whether the translator had taken liberties. I have not been brave enough to attempt to read a book in French but from what I have read so far I am really tempted to so with this one. Where can I purchase the French version?
I could feel the author's pain and is has been expressed so exquisitely that I found myself in tears and I have only read about thirty or so pages.