Madame: Book review and otther matters
I have just come back from Parents' Evening --the first of 3 consecutive nights! Knackered...
On the way back I stopped in Hugendabel and bought
1. Speak, Memory --Nabokov's autiobiography (apparently the best autobio. ever written)
2. A History of Love -- by Nicole Krauss (novel)
3. The Sea by John Banville - Booker prize-winning (2005) novella by a prose master.
and last, but not least, I finished Madame by Antoni Libera and it is, without doubt, one of the most engaging and wonderful
novels I have ever read with a great narrator--I fell in love with his character and finished the book at 3 am in the morning.
It is a Polish novel (beautifully translated into English) and set in 1960s Warsaw for the main part when it was under Communist rule.
The narrator is a high school student in his final year and an intellectual snob, prodigiously well-read, and falls for his headmistress--who happens to also be his French teacher. The novel follows his planned seduction of said French teacher, the Madame of the title...from this simple premiss Libera has spun a wonderful literary tale. Highly recommended. On my 'best ever novels' list so it can't be bad!
review:
http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/liberaa/madame.htm
On the way back I stopped in Hugendabel and bought
1. Speak, Memory --Nabokov's autiobiography (apparently the best autobio. ever written)
2. A History of Love -- by Nicole Krauss (novel)
3. The Sea by John Banville - Booker prize-winning (2005) novella by a prose master.
and last, but not least, I finished Madame by Antoni Libera and it is, without doubt, one of the most engaging and wonderful
novels I have ever read with a great narrator--I fell in love with his character and finished the book at 3 am in the morning.
It is a Polish novel (beautifully translated into English) and set in 1960s Warsaw for the main part when it was under Communist rule.
The narrator is a high school student in his final year and an intellectual snob, prodigiously well-read, and falls for his headmistress--who happens to also be his French teacher. The novel follows his planned seduction of said French teacher, the Madame of the title...from this simple premiss Libera has spun a wonderful literary tale. Highly recommended. On my 'best ever novels' list so it can't be bad!
review:
http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/liberaa/madame.htm