Beyond the Letters

Biographies are generally a non-fiction genre, for even though they have some place for imagination and emotionality within them, they are mostly a collection of facts presented in an attractive way. But many writers, especially modern ones, try to reconsider this quite old genre and give a new life to it. Here I will tell you about some novels that depict images of famous people, and whose main aim is not to tell the story of someone’s life but to let the reader see these personalities through the author’s eyes. 1. Miss Charity by Marie-Aude Muriel Loosely based on the life of Beatrix Potter this little comedy however managed to create a very credible image of the acclaimed children author. Beatrix Potter was a talented writer with her own unique vision of the world and her own ideas about woman’s position in society. Living in highly conventional Victorian society, she dared to state that any woman could be more than just a wife or a housekeeper. The book is written in th...

Nina Simone, Mr. Bojangles and all that jazz I started the review with this song because even if you are not a jazz fan you absolutely have to listen to it before you read the book (and preferably while you are doing it and immediately after you’ve finished). Otherwise you won’t be able to fully appreciate the atmosphere. This tiny novel is simply jazz age reborn, and if you have ever read Fitzgerald you certainly have an idea of how it feels to read Bourdeaut. Jazz music  can be found in every corner of this story, the characters listen to it, dance to it, and live according to the ways of jazz age – drinking, having fun, enjoying their lives while they can, even though the world around them is breaking into pieces. This book is about escapism, about sacrificing reality to happiness and common sense to feelings. When you open the first page, you immediately meet  the narrator – a nameless boy of an uncertain age . What may seem indifference to the character in fact ser...

Detective story as a genre is simultaneously new and worn-out as on the one hand it was developed in the middle of 19 th century, which makes it very young in terms of literary history, and on the other it is currently so overused by mass culture that you can hardly imagine it can bring something surprising to an experienced reader. Still the novel of Michel Bussi proves it possible. The house of Claude Monet in Giverny Jérôme Morval, ophthalmologist and passionate art collector is found dead in the acclaimed Monet’s gardens in the picturesque village of Giverny. In his pocket the police finds a postcard representing Monet’s famous “Waterlilies” which reads: “Eleven years old. Happy birthday”. This could be the beginning of a usual crime plot but for the fact that the book is not about Morval at all. His death and the mysterious connection of this event to the works of Claude Monet are merely a trigger to some much more dramatic and complicated events. This death is strang...

Very often during the days of early spring or late autumn we have such days when the sky is grey and cloudy, the ground is covered with dirty rests of snow mixed with rainwater and then you get the mood when you don't want to go anywhere or do anything and getting out of your warm bed into chilly and colourless street seems a torture. When such days come I know it's high time I picked one of Sagan's books. Strangely enough, though slow-flowing and melancholic, they always make me feel better on low days. Like many other people I started my acquaintance with Sagan with "Bonjour Tristesse".This novel is very famous so it's not surprising that I've heard about it many times but somehow I escaped from reading it. It seemed to me uninteresting, even boring and I had no desire even to open it. But my third year in university was the time for literary experiments and I included it into my to-read list. I will simply say I never regretted that decision. ...

"Madame Bovary, c'est moi" (Gustave Flaubert) Very often to understand a work of literature, a real work of literature I mean, it is necessary to know the background. Often the reasons that caused the author to write his book can become a key to its understanding. Often the key is the episodes of the author's biography or his beliefs. Here the key is Flaubert himself. Before I begin speaking about the novel itself I'd like to say a few words about Flaubert's concept of "ivory tower" . Flaubert liked to say that a real writer, metaphorically speaking, should lock himself in an ivory tower, which will separate him from the vulgar and trivial world, only then will he be able to produce a real work of art. What does this mean? Ivory was always considered to be a noble material, as it is very rare and expensive and only chosen ones can afford to have things made of it. Ivory tower symbolizes the nobility of writer, his moral superiority over oth...