This was Marguerite Duras’s debut novel. It was only translated into English in 2021, though it was first published in 1943. The publishing history isThis was Marguerite Duras’s debut novel. It was only translated into English in 2021, though it was first published in 1943. The publishing history is quite a tale. Duras wrote the book in 1941 and submitted it to Gallimard, the major French publishing house both then and now. They declined the manuscript though Raymond Queneau was a reader there and found it good. He later became a great friend of Marguerite. Finally another house, Plon, published the novel in 1943.
Marguerite was strongly influenced by Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, also by George Sand and Zola, 19th century writers. She wrote the book in that style thinking it was what was required for a literary novel. The rest of her novels have more of her unique voice but The Impudent Ones was, like most of her novels, taken from the experiences of her life: the unsettled existence in Indochina, her domineering mother, her brothers both bad and beloved, and her search for her own personality amid all of that.
For many years the author disclaimed this first book but near the end of her life she agreed to allow Gallimard to republish it in French in 1992.
I have now read 10 of Duras’s novels and have come to love her writing. At first I read them all out of order and now am filling in the ones I missed. Her themes of troubled family life, an almost crazy mother, a cruel and dissolute brother, and the awakening of her female characters as they come of age, are all evident in this first novel. Her sensitive and vibrant descriptions of the natural world are enough to put the reader right in the story’s location in a French village. The inner turmoil of her main character feels so real that I seemed to going through it with her.
I found The Impudent Ones to be as wonderful as all the others I have read. Though she hued so closely to those earlier writers, her unique qualities as a novelist come through entirely. ...more
Bayou Suzette is the first in Lois Lenski's American Regional Series. Between 1943 and 1968, she wrote 17 books for readers aged 8-12, covering many oBayou Suzette is the first in Lois Lenski's American Regional Series. Between 1943 and 1968, she wrote 17 books for readers aged 8-12, covering many of the major regions of the United States. Her purpose was to tell children how other children lived in various areas of the country. In today's world of cookie cutter towns with all the same eateries and shops, Lenski's books give the flavor and essence of regions in our country when they were unique only 60 years ago. (Link to her bibliography.)
Suzette is the irrepressible daughter of a large Creole family living in a small town amid the Mississippi Delta. When the story opens, her father is bedridden from a gunshot wound that failed to heal after a shooting competition. All the children in the family contribute to keep money and food coming in. Suzette's job is fishing.
Eventually she meets and brings home an orphaned Indian girl named Marteel. Indians (which is what they were called in the 1940s, not Native Americans) were considered the lowest class of people in the Delta: dirty, untrustworthy and even dangerous. But Suzette's big-hearted though tough-minded Maman is eventually won over, especially after Marteel helps the family in important ways.
The Creole community is rambunctious and somewhat wild with family feuds, feasting days and hard times that include the flooding of the Mississippi. Lenski's children are not goody-goody or examples of correct behavior. Suzette has plenty of strong willed gumption which alternates between adventure and defiance.
I was captivated on every page of this lively story....more