Candy Story (European Women Writers) - Softcover

Marie Redonnet; Alexandra Quinn

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0803289588 ISBN 13: 9780803289581

Publisher: Bison Books, 1995

Synopsis

Candy Story recounts a turbulent year in the life of Mia, a young woman whose apparent calm is perpetually threatened by inner doubts and outer catastrophe. Her modest dreams of happiness are dashed by the deaths of her mother, old friends, and her lover. Mia is a talented writer, the author of an autobiographical novel. Now, assailed by calamity and misfortune, she struggles with writer’s block, confounded—at least for the moment—by the senseless world around her.

 

Candy Story is the fourth novel by Marie Redonnet. Translations of the first three—Hôtel Splendid, Forever Valley, and Rose Mellie Rose—are also available from the University of Nebraska Press. In its unadorned prose and passionate focus on the inner life of a young woman, this fourth novel is unmistakably allied to the earlier ones. It will enthrall Redonnet’s admirers and win new ones.

 

Born in Paris in 1947, Redonnet taught for a number of years in a suburban lycée before deciding to pursue a writing career full time. Since her volume of poetry Le Mort & Cie appeared in 1985, she has published four novels, a novella, numerous short stories, and three dramatic works.

About this title

About the Author

Alexandra Quinn is a program associate at The Academy of American Poets in New York. This is her first book-length translation.

Reviews

Somewhere at the bottom (way at the bottom), Candy Story is a tawdry thriller. Corrupt politicians with ruthless henchmen kill to protect illicit gains, while film stars and high-profile writers trade off lovers. Some dozen or so people die before the end, but with all the death and mayhem, this plot is nonetheless tangential. As if to emphasize the superfluity of the characters, Redonnet's given them awfully similar names (Lill, Lind, Lina, Lisa, Li, Line, Lize, Lenz and so on and so forth) which makes it easier just to let the story flow and watch out for the main character?the narrator, Mia?and the main idea: usually the burden of legacy or memory. Mia, who has been having trouble writing a second book to follow her Sise Memories, keeps inheriting things. Money and a house are the practical but not always terribly helpful items, but there's also the memorabilia: an Africanophile friend's written record of the African women he has known and of the progress of the disease he contracted as a result; a military man's memoir, which consists only of complicated mathematical equations; a photo album. Mia's lovers never seem to remember her name during sex, each calling her "Candy" at the crucial moment. Those who have read Redonnet's Hotel Splendid, Forever Valley, and Rose Mellie Rose, all of which were published by Nebraska last year, will recognize certain elements: the swamp and other watery motifs, the decrepit hotel, the mayor's widow. The multiple layers here are more than this slim novel can support, making it a better bet for readers who have already developed a taste for Redonnet's dark, mazy style.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Redonnet received critical acclaim for her trilogy (Hotel Splendid, Forever Valley, and Rose Mellie Rose), published by the University of Nebraska in 1994. This new work tells the story of Mia, a young writer trying to carry on as the world around her is collapsing. As summer begins, she returns to her girlhood summer home of Sise for the funeral of old friends. Nearby Sise City is preparing for the premier of the latest film based on the work of leading novelist Witz, which Mia will attend. But nothing happens as planned. We meet characters who die off a few pages later. The places Mia visits are all in disrepair. Yet from these ashes, Mia finds a story to tell. Throughout, events are related in Redonnet's signature style, which the Times Literary Supplement describes as "so rigorously factual...that the prose takes on a striking poetry of its own." Recommended for large literature collections and serious readers of international fiction.?Debbie Bogenschutz, Cincinnati Technical Coll.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Bison Books
• Publication date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0803289588
• ISBN 13: 9780803289581
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 99