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areidbarnes's review against another edition
2.0
Actually two novellas which I was surprised about!
The first one, A Simple Tale, was okay, it followed a story of a woman's immigration tale through World War Two and her use as a political prisoner through her formative years. While it started out exciting (an incident with the woman she is caring for) it was extremely anticlimactic and disappointing.
The second, The Hunters, is again, anticlimactic, without any answers!!! I was so frustrated through out as it's written really intellectually and it made it hard to follow and then there was just no pay off.
The first one, A Simple Tale, was okay, it followed a story of a woman's immigration tale through World War Two and her use as a political prisoner through her formative years. While it started out exciting (an incident with the woman she is caring for) it was extremely anticlimactic and disappointing.
The second, The Hunters, is again, anticlimactic, without any answers!!! I was so frustrated through out as it's written really intellectually and it made it hard to follow and then there was just no pay off.
nekreader's review against another edition
3.0
I liked these two short novels, the first more than the second, but not nearly as much as The Last Life. I actually found The Hunters somewhat difficult to get through.
floralfox's review against another edition
4.0
truly a 3.5 rating but rounded up. the stories are good, but can be convoluted by the long winded comma-ridden sentences (several times I had to reread sentences--more than once!--because I would forget the subject) and unnecessary word choices that distract from the stories.
in the first, maria, a housekeeper, reflects on "the end" as she realizes her longtime employer-slash-friend is nearing death and can no longer care for herself. this prompts a reflection of her life as a frivolous ukrainian girl in labor camps in wwii to her status as displaced person in canada, and the quiet love story that blossoms with lev. their son, effortlessly canadian, falls in love with a woman who maria thinks is "not a nice girl" and the chasm between first and second generation immigrant parent and child widens. all of maria's hurts: the loss of lev, the widening gap in her relationship with her son, being the least favorite grandmother, the way her daughter in law refers to her as a DP, the obsessive way she cleans and preserves her house (thunk plastic coverings on everything she uses, making her home a place her own family can't feel comfortable in when they visit)--all of these hurts are discussed but not over examined and that's where they resonate with me, the way people silently carry on. the story ends when maria can realize that she has been, in other ways, holding herself back from carrying on and buys herself a painting. a simple story, but somehow still captivating.
the hunters is too complicated to type out a review for one my phone... must be done later.
in the first, maria, a housekeeper, reflects on "the end" as she realizes her longtime employer-slash-friend is nearing death and can no longer care for herself. this prompts a reflection of her life as a frivolous ukrainian girl in labor camps in wwii to her status as displaced person in canada, and the quiet love story that blossoms with lev. their son, effortlessly canadian, falls in love with a woman who maria thinks is "not a nice girl" and the chasm between first and second generation immigrant parent and child widens. all of maria's hurts: the loss of lev, the widening gap in her relationship with her son, being the least favorite grandmother, the way her daughter in law refers to her as a DP, the obsessive way she cleans and preserves her house (thunk plastic coverings on everything she uses, making her home a place her own family can't feel comfortable in when they visit)--all of these hurts are discussed but not over examined and that's where they resonate with me, the way people silently carry on. the story ends when maria can realize that she has been, in other ways, holding herself back from carrying on and buys herself a painting. a simple story, but somehow still captivating.
the hunters is too complicated to type out a review for one my phone... must be done later.
lisa_mc's review against another edition
3.0
A bit too interior/stream of consciousness for my taste, but well written and atmospheric.
lola425's review against another edition
4.0
I'm a newly converted Messud fan. I loved these novellas. Although the stories couldn't be more different, they share a very similar emotional atmosphere: isolation and how we reconcile the part of us that "shows" to those parts of us that are hidden, and can we ever reconcile the two? In telling Maria's story, Messud writes that Maria saw parts of herself reflected in the different people that were in her life (son, employers, acquaintances) and she wasn't sure how all of those reflections could possibly reconciled into a whole. (Read the novella, Messud says it much more eloquently). Maria couldn't possibly reconcile herself. Her experiences in the camps schooled her in survival, but at a cost. In the next novella, the protagonist could not be more different than Maria. S/he is unspecified, we don't know his/her name, sex, can't even decode using the sex of the person's partner. S/he is suffering through a break-up, wants as little contact as possible with anyone, is angsty for no reason other than that's what educated, fairly well-off people do in crisis, struggle with the question of "who am i? is it worth it?" S/he struggles with a reconciliation of self, one much less weighty than Maria's, but a reconciliation all the same.
bundy23's review against another edition
2.0
Dull and incredibly over-written. The writing is lovely though.
jen_e_fer's review
4.0
This was a book of two novellas. The first novella was A Simple Tale, about a Ukrainian widow that immigrated to Canada after WWII. The second novella was The Hunters was about an American woman spending a summer in Kilburn, England. The first novella was interesting because it went through the main character's (Maria) life; her difficulties with her clients as a cleaning lady and unhappiness with her daughter in law. The second second novella was slower in the beginning but I ended up enjoying the main character's (unnamed this time) observations about her neighbor. That character had gone to England to write a book and probably assumed that her neighbors would be standoffish because that is a stereotype of the British people. Her neighbor, Ridley, ended up being friendly but the main character found her intrusive.
Both novellas were well written. I liked both stories because the characters seemed like ordinary people that you might run into in daily life and wonder what their lives were like.
Both novellas were well written. I liked both stories because the characters seemed like ordinary people that you might run into in daily life and wonder what their lives were like.
kirstiecat's review against another edition
4.0
There are actually two novellas included in my copy-The Hunters and A Simple Tale and, though they are quite different from eachother, they both possess such an eerie strangeness that make you contemplate them long after you finish. They are memorable in the same subtle sinking way that the characters themselves are memorable to other characters they meet within the novellas. A Simple Tale has a great deal to do with being a Displaced Person or peasant in the Ukraine around the time Hitler came to power. Our protagonist, who remembers her girlhood trauma tells us of her life at the labor camps then immigrating to Canada and starting a family there afterwards. It is just as much about pride, dignity, and family as it is about experiences and things that can never be truly wiped clean. We get a sense of Maria the caretaker and mother...Maria the proud peasant who has very strong opinions and we admire her even though she is strange herself and sometimes distant. I really appreciated another side of the story of the Holocaust and, while it's very important to learn about the persecution of the Jewish population, it seems that isn't the complete story which should be told. I really believe one of the only ways to prevent this atrocity from happening again is to understand all facets of it and this is one facet I hadn't really come across before.
Hunters is a much different sort of novella and takes place in England with a visiting American professor who wants a nice temporary home to write his novel about death. And, of course, he stumbles upon a strange woman who (like Maria in the first novel though quite different in terms of life experiences and personality) is a caretaker. Her problem, however, is that the people she keeps taking care of (elderly mainly) keep dying and so there's a sinking possibility she could be the cause of it that slowly gets planted in our heads and the head of the protagonist. This is a tricky one and there's quite a bit of symbolism between rabbits and Polaroids. The reader really has to examine the situation and the characters closely...I'd say more but I don't want to give anything away.
Hunters is a much different sort of novella and takes place in England with a visiting American professor who wants a nice temporary home to write his novel about death. And, of course, he stumbles upon a strange woman who (like Maria in the first novel though quite different in terms of life experiences and personality) is a caretaker. Her problem, however, is that the people she keeps taking care of (elderly mainly) keep dying and so there's a sinking possibility she could be the cause of it that slowly gets planted in our heads and the head of the protagonist. This is a tricky one and there's quite a bit of symbolism between rabbits and Polaroids. The reader really has to examine the situation and the characters closely...I'd say more but I don't want to give anything away.
marciag's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0