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A review by kirstiecat
The Hunters by Claire Messud
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.