Cry, Mother Spain

Aged fifteen, as Franco's forces begin their murderous purges and cities across Spain rise up against the old order, Montse has never heard the word fascista before. In any case, the villagers say facha (the ch is a real Spanish ch, by the way, with a real spit). Montse lives in a small village, high in the hills, where few people can read or write and fewer still ever leave. If everything goes according to her mother's plan, Montse will never leave either. She will become a good, humble maid for the local landowners, muchísimas gracias, with every Sunday off to dance the jota in the church square. But Montse's world is changing. Her brother José has just returned from Lérida with a red and black scarf and a new, dangerous vocabulary and his words are beginning to open up new realms to his little sister. She might not understand half of what he says, but how can anyone become a maid in the Burgos family when their head is ringing with shouts of Revolución, Comunidad and Libertad? The war, it seems, has arrived in the nick of time.

Literature & Fiction

SALVAYRE, Lydie

Genre Fiction

Quercus Publishing

The hiring of a new secretary shouldn't be a big deal--just a slight a change in the office environment. But for the protagonist of this novel, it is a declaration of war, a call to arms: "The new secretary has only been here two days," she says, "and I'm already talking about evil, a word I shouldn't even be using--arming myself for battle and choosing my weapons." Her quiet life of sacrifice and service has been rudely disrupted by the new hire, and she is not--despite the advice of her doctor, her neighbors, and her daughter--about to leave it at that. Instead, sabotage, alcohol, and kindness become the arsenal in a conflict fought across copy rooms and office parties. But the humor is undercut by a sadness, a sense of defeat that makes this slim novel resonate with the injustice of our increasingly impersonal, corporate world.

Everyday Life

Contemporary

Dalkey Archive Press

When a bailiff turns up, a teenager tries to salvage her mother, their dignity and the TV. When a bailiff arrives at a housing project on the edge of Paris to draw up a routine inventory of goods in view of seizure, the reception he receives from Rose Melle and her teenage daughter is more than he has bargained for. Rose, forever unhinged by the trauma of childhood spent under Nazi occupation, mistakes him for a collaborationist thug and assails him with her alternately tragic and hilarious memories of Vichy France. In a narrative that lurches giddily between 1942 and 1997, Salvayre picks at the sores of recent French history, exposing its continuing authoritarianism. "The Company Of Ghosts" won the Prix Novembre in France.

Company of Ghosts (French Literature)

Literary

At the City Hall in a small town in the South of France, one man starts his campaign to correct the ills that have overtaken his proud nation by lecuring the town's inhabitants on the art of conversation. In the narrator's opinion, "coversation is a specialty that is most eminently French," an art that should be nurtured and practiced, and can help repair France's reputation. Not to mention being a good conversationalist is extremely useful for seducing women, which is how the narrator managed to attract Lucienne, his "superbly lumpish" wife who died two months before giving this lecture. One of the oddest characters in contemporary fiction, the lecturer in this novel can't help but digress about his sad life in the midst of his speech, giving the reader a view of a self-centered man trying to turn one of his greatest faults into a virtue to be forced on everyone else. By turns ironic, hilarious, pathetic, and mortifying, Salvayre's The Lecture is an exuberant example of the exciting fiction being written in France.

Lecture

The Power of Flies begins in a courtroom, where a man is undergoing an interrogation. He has committed a crime, and he must now explain himself. But instead of letting the judge, lawyer, and psychiatrist question him, he asks himself all the questions--and answers them. While ranting on to the court about various topics--his family, the museum where he works as a tour guide, and even the French philosopher and mathematician, Blaise Pascal--the narrator of The Power of Flies reveals himself to be both calculating and unstable. In this latest novel from acclaimed French writer Lydie Salvayre, it is up to the reader to sort through his philosophical diatribe to discover why this man turned killer.

Power of Flies

A disturbing, provocative story of an awards ceremony at a massive automotive factory takes acceptance speeches and presentations, makes them into individual minibiographies, and explores the insanity and chaos that is not isolated to fiction, but is a reflection of human life. IP.

The Award

Thunder's Mouth Pr

La Puissance des mouches

SEUIL

La Compagnie des spectres

157pages. 14cmx20,5cmx1,5cm. Broché. Il s'agit de belles âmes. En visite chez les pauvres. Cela se fait. La visite est organisée par Real Voyages qui prône un tourisme un peu particulier puisqu'il consiste à faire découvrir l'envers des grandes villes et leur désolation. Projet admirable -nous vous demandons d'applaudir -qui va être sérieusement mis à mal. Car dans le bus qui conduit ces très charitables personnes à travers six pays d'Europe, il y a Jason, le trouble fête, que les pleurnicheries de ses voisins et leurs hoquets indignés exaspèrent. Et il y a Olympe. Olympe qui se tait. Olympe qui se tait parce qu'elle n'a pas les mots qu'il faut, ni les façons, mais dont le rire s'entend de l'autre côté de la mer.

Les Belles âmes

POINTS

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by SALVAYRE, Lydie. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by SALVAYRE, Lydie

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by SALVAYRE, Lydie. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Cry, Mother Spain

Everyday Life

Company of Ghosts (French Literature)

Lecture

Power of Flies

The Award

La Puissance des mouches

La Compagnie des spectres

Les Belles âmes

La Compagnie des spectres