4.0
The Mirador
ByPublisher Description
A New York Review Books Original
Separated from her mother—the famed author of Suite Française—during World War II, Irène Némirovsky’s daughter offers a “nuanced, eloquent portrait of a complicated woman” in a series of memoirs that reimagine her mother’s life (The Washington Post)
Élisabeth Gille was only five when the Gestapo arrested her mother, and she grew up remembering next to nothing of her. Her mother was a figure, a name, Irène Némirovsky, a once popular novelist, a Russian émigré from an immensely rich family, a Jew who didn’t consider herself one and who even contributed to collaborationist periodicals, and a woman who died in Auschwitz because she was a Jew. To her daughter she was a tragic enigma and a stranger.
It was to come to terms with that stranger that Gille wrote, in The Mirador, her mother’s memoirs. The first part of the book, dated 1929, the year David Golder made Némirovsky famous, takes us back to her difficult childhood in Kiev and St. Petersburg. Her father is doting, her mother a beautiful monster, while Irene herself is bookish and self-absorbed. There are pogroms and riots, parties and excursions, then revolution, from which the family flees to France, a country of “moderation, freedom, and generosity,” where at last she is happy.
Some thirteen years later Irène picks up her pen again. Everything has changed. Abandoned by friends and colleagues, she lives in the countryside and waits for the knock on the door. Written a decade before the publication of Suite Française made Irène Némirovsky famous once more (something Gille did not live to see), The Mirador is a haunted and a haunting book, an unflinching reckoning with the tragic past, and a triumph not only of the imagination but of love.
Separated from her mother—the famed author of Suite Française—during World War II, Irène Némirovsky’s daughter offers a “nuanced, eloquent portrait of a complicated woman” in a series of memoirs that reimagine her mother’s life (The Washington Post)
Élisabeth Gille was only five when the Gestapo arrested her mother, and she grew up remembering next to nothing of her. Her mother was a figure, a name, Irène Némirovsky, a once popular novelist, a Russian émigré from an immensely rich family, a Jew who didn’t consider herself one and who even contributed to collaborationist periodicals, and a woman who died in Auschwitz because she was a Jew. To her daughter she was a tragic enigma and a stranger.
It was to come to terms with that stranger that Gille wrote, in The Mirador, her mother’s memoirs. The first part of the book, dated 1929, the year David Golder made Némirovsky famous, takes us back to her difficult childhood in Kiev and St. Petersburg. Her father is doting, her mother a beautiful monster, while Irene herself is bookish and self-absorbed. There are pogroms and riots, parties and excursions, then revolution, from which the family flees to France, a country of “moderation, freedom, and generosity,” where at last she is happy.
Some thirteen years later Irène picks up her pen again. Everything has changed. Abandoned by friends and colleagues, she lives in the countryside and waits for the knock on the door. Written a decade before the publication of Suite Française made Irène Némirovsky famous once more (something Gille did not live to see), The Mirador is a haunted and a haunting book, an unflinching reckoning with the tragic past, and a triumph not only of the imagination but of love.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesThe Mirador Reviews
4.0
Hieu Nguyen
Created 11 months agoShare
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“I picked up this book with zero knowledge of Irene Nemirovsky (im ignorant sue me), and by the end of it I was greatly impacted by the story of her life, or more precisely the story of Jewish people during the Nazi rule.
The author, Elisabeth Gille, was taken away from her mother, Irene Nemirovsky, when she was only 5 years old, and therefore she had none concrete memories of her. This "biography" of her mom, constructed from the daughter's "dreams", is a strange mix between fictional elements and real-life facts, spanning from Russia in the early 1900s to the countryside of France in the late 1930s.
I was not much concerned about the life of Irene Nemirovsky, knowing quickly after the first pages that she was born into a wealthy Jewish family in Russia. Her life and her unfortunate demise were, in a way, the consequences of her attitude and decisions. However, it was deeply interesting to learn about history, about Russia politics and society during that time (I fell into a rabbit hole reading about Rasputin's assassination), and the lives of Jews that were full of turmoils and danger.
In the end, this is a very dense book with roughly 240 pages. Compelling and intriguing, though at times not easy to follow if you're unfamiliar with World War II history especially in Russia.”
Bookish13
Created about 2 years agoShare
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Lindsey Jones
Created about 12 years agoShare
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Diane Pedrosa
Created about 12 years agoShare
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Michael Filippone
Created almost 14 years agoShare
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“Good, but in that "hmm, interesting" kind of way. It didn't GRAB me. The second part was better than the first.”
About Elisabeth Gille
Élisabeth Gille (1937–1996) was born in Paris, the daughter of Michel Epstein, a banker, and of the novelist Irène Némirovsky. In 1942, both parents were deported to Auschwitz, where they died, but Gille and her older sister, Denise, lived out the duration of World War II in hiding. Gille worked for many years as an editor and translator, especially of science fiction, and she was over fifty when her first book, The Mirador, appeared and was immediately recognized as a major achievement. Before her death she also published Le Crabe sur la banquette arrière (The Crab in the Backseat), a mordantly funny examination of people’s responses to her battle with cancer, and a short novel that reflects her and her sister’s life in the years after their parents’ disappearance, Un paysage de cendres, translated into English as Shadows of a Childhood.
Marina Harss is a translator and dance writer living in New York City. Her recent translations include Mariolina Venezia’s Been Here a Thousand Years, Alberto Moravia’s Conjugal Love, Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Stories from the City of God, and Dino Buzzati’s Poem Strip (NYRB Classics).
René de Ceccatty is a French novelist, playwright, and critic. His most recent book is a study of Giacomo Leopardi.
Marina Harss is a translator and dance writer living in New York City. Her recent translations include Mariolina Venezia’s Been Here a Thousand Years, Alberto Moravia’s Conjugal Love, Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Stories from the City of God, and Dino Buzzati’s Poem Strip (NYRB Classics).
René de Ceccatty is a French novelist, playwright, and critic. His most recent book is a study of Giacomo Leopardi.
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