Customer Reviews

The Rendezvous

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

A beautiful teenage daughter waits patiently, loyally, dreamily; by turns hopefully and hopelessly for a fickle, messed-up mother; they've a lunch date in a Paris cafe. The size and the scope of the daughter's bereavement take up the whole of this slim book. She's had a lifetime of gentrified confusion, short bursts of happiness, rejection, and grief. Levy recounts this skillfully and stylishly, and with a blameless bitter heart. The remembered details of her childhood (toys, clothes, mundane events) take on a burning importance, as if they're all that's left -- after a catastrophe. There's a growing genre of these memoirs of yearning and loss, and this one is a fine addition.

...The author does an wonderful job of making the protagonist sympathetic without vilefying the mother. My heart went out to the girl as she sat and waited for her mother, knowing, on some level, that she wasn't going to arrive. The use of flashbacks to tell the story of the girl's childhood neglect by her mother is well done. Some of the descriptions are captivating. It is amazing how much depth that the characters have, given that the story is really an interior monologue from one person's perspective. This is a book about hurt, disappointment, hope, regret and loss. Even if the reader hasn't experienced the sort of neglect that the lead character does, we can relate to her pain -- the emotions she is feeling are ones we have all felt at one time or another, for one reason or another. As such, the device of not giving her a name works really well.

This book may be hard to find now, but I strongly reccommend that you make the effort, ...(it seemed more like a short story than a novel), so as well written as it is, I can understand why a person wouldn't want to spend too much to get it.

This book, at least in the Spanish version is a very interesting monologue about the relationship between a young woman and her mother, who always lived an independent life, following the May '68 values as much as the elder generation followed the old ones.

Promising debut for the daughter of a well-known French philosopher. Makes you want to read her next book.

The book was delivered in a timely fashion, and it arrived as it was described. Just what I wanted.

The only writers who can get away with telling, telling, telling are writers with great voice and masterful use of language. This was flat and silly and needn't have been longer than a two page short-short. Exemplifies what's wrong with the state of French letters which is nothing more than navel gazing.