Mirabelle Pickers, The (Paperback)

Jacques Reda

ISBN 10: 085646449X / ISBN 13: 9780856464492

Published by Carcanet Press Ltd, Manchester, 2012

About this Item

Paperback. Jacques Reda chooses the height of the plum-picking season to revisit - on an old motorbike - his home town in Lorraine, north-eastern France. The fragrant allure of mirabelles introduces a colourful mix of old acquaintances renewed in these five days and vividly remembered places that have shaped a lifetime's writing. With its reflections, often whimsical, on the passing of the years, and its varied motifs - the plums, the provincial stillness, the toy soldiers of his childhood, 'the astonishing existence of others' first discovered as a love-struck schoolboy - this has few rivals as a portrayal of town life in la France profonde, written with tenderness and humour. A translated memoir, in which the author chooses the height of the mirabelle season in Lorraine for a long-delayed visit to his home town, Luneville. It presents a series of impressions, encounters and musings that takes us from Friday Evening to Tuesday Morning, through a remembered topography that has largely shaped a lifetime's writing. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Seller Inventory # 9780856464492

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Mirabelle Pickers, The (Paperback)
• Publisher: Carcanet Press Ltd, Manchester
• Publication Date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 085646449X
• ISBN 13: 9780856464492
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

"Indisputably one of the most invigorating French writers."—John Taylor, Paths to Contemporary French Literature

 

 

 

Jacques Réda chooses the height of the plum-picking season to revisit – on an old motorbike – his home town in Lorraine, north-eastern France. The fragrant allure of mirabelles introduces a colourful mix of old acquaintances renewed in these five days and vividly remembered places that have shaped a lifetime’s writing.

 

With its reflections, often whimsical, on the passing of the years, and its varied motifs – the plums, the provincial stillness, the toy soldiers of his childhood, ‘the astonishing existence of others’ first discovered as a love-struck schoolboy – this has few rivals as a portrayal of town life in la France profonde, written with tenderness and humour.

 

About the Author

Jacques Réda, born in Lunéville in 1929, was awarded the French Academy’s Grand Prix in 1993 for a lifetime’s work, and in 1999 the Bourse Goncourt de la Poésie. He was editor of the Nouvelle Revue Française from 1987 to 1995. Treading Lightly: Selected Poems 1961-1975 translated by Jennie Feldman was published in 2005. He lives in Paris.

 

Jennie Feldman studied French at Oxford. Her poetry collections The Lost Notebook and Swift are published by Anvil, as is the anthology Into the Deep Street: Seven Modern French Poets 1938-2008, co-authored with Stephen Romer and shortlisted for the 2011 Popescu Prize. She lives in Jerusalem and Oxford.