The Girl from the Chartreuse

Pierre Péju, Ina Rilke

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French

Vintage
24 November 2016

Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)

An outstanding prize winning, best-selling French novel. ""An unbearable and magnificent novel - on how the ocean of literature breaks against the silence of childhood"", Le Nouvel Observateur

The owner of the bookshop THE VERB TO BE, is a red-haired giant imprisoned in an enormous body and his solitude. One wet afternoon, driving a vanload of new and second-hand books,

tienneVollard knocks down and seriously injures a little girl,

va. In the hospital, he meets

va's mother, Ther se, a struggling single parent who lacks maternal instincts and whose dream is to be faraway, alone. Both are haunted by guilt- Ther se because of her lateness in collecting her daughter, and Vollard because he did not manage to stop his car on time (even if he knows that he could not have avoided -va- indeed she seemed to throw herself in front of the car). Vollard visits

va regularly while she is in a coma and reads books to her, while Ther se spaces her visits out. When

va eventually wakes up, she has become mute and is terribly weakened. A few weeks after

va has been sent to a rehabilitation centre in the Massif de la Chartreuse, Ther se gets a job faraway and asks Vollard to visit her daughter on her behalf. Soon, Vollard enjoys their walks in the mountain, where he tells her stories and poems he has memorized and tries to break her out of her mute, impassive shell. However, nothing seems to help ""La Petite Chartreuse"" - Vollard calls

va that way in reference to the monastic order of the Chartreux - to enjoy life again. She becomes weaker everyday to such a point that Vollard decides to find Ther se and to take her back to her daughter before it is too late . . .

By: Pierre Péju
Translated by: Ina Rilke
Imprint: Vintage
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 198mm, Width: 129mm, Spine: 12mm
Weight: 128g
ISBN: 9781784705626
ISBN 10: 1784705624
Pages: 176
Publication Date: 24 November 2016
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Pierre Peju (Author) Pierre Peju, writer, philosopher and director of studies at the International College of Philosophy, has written several books. The Girl from the Chartreuse met with an exceptional critical and commercial success in France. Ina Rilke (Translator) Ina Rilke is the translator of novels by WF Hermans, Cees Nooteboom, Pierre Peju, Dai Sijie, Hafid Bouazza, Margriet de Moor, Arthur Japin and Erwin Mortier. She won the Vondel Prize for translation from the Dutch and the Scott Moncrieff Prize for translation from the French.

Reviews for The Girl from the Chartreuse

'Peju's real subject is literature itself...Péju treads a fine line between pretension and profundity, layering his text with many others from the Gospels to Becket and Borges, but his own words, weighed against theirs, are rarely found wanting.' * Independent on Sunday *

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The Girl from the Chartreuse

Pierre Péju, Ina Rilke

$34.99

Paperback

Reviews for The Girl from the Chartreuse

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