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The Living, The Living, 0803227744, 0-8032-2774-4, 978-0-8032-2774-3, 9780803227743, Pascale Kramer
Translated by Tamsin Black
, European Women Writers, The Living, 0803278233, 0-8032-7823-3, 978-0-8032-7823-3, 9780803278233, Pascale Kramer
Translated by Tamsin Black
, European Women Writer
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The Living
Pascale Kramer Translated by Tamsin Black
hardcover
2007.
147 pp.
none
978-0-8032-2774-3
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 How, this novel asks, can you imagine the worst when you are young and life is sunny? The answer lies in the telling of The Living, in which a young mother, with her teenage brother, takes her two small children to a deserted quarry on a hot summer afternoon. Seen through the eyes of the brother, Benoît, the drama plays out with all the power and seeming inevitability of classical tragedy, made all the more intense by the blistering heat of the day. On that blazing hot summer day Benoît, to entertain his nephews, seats them in a gondola and sends them down a cableway to the pylon on the other side of the river. The harrowing story of what follows is narrated in Pascale Kramer’s artfully simple yet transparent prose, evoking the deep reservoirs of feeling that family members cannot voice, perhaps even to themselves. The Living is filled with the vitality of summer. At the same time, it reveals suffering at its most pure and most volatile as the affected people wonder, in the wake of tragedy, whether they should subsist with the living or with the dead.
 Pascale Kramer’s Les vivants received excellent reviews in the French and Francophone press and won the Prix Lipp, Switzerland’s most prestigious literary prize. Kramer is the Swiss author of several other books in French, including Manu and Onze ans plus tard. Tamsin Black has translated many books, including Marie NDiaye’s Rosie Carpe, available in a Bison Books edition.
 "Swiss novelist Kramer's first work to be translated into English is the Prix Lipp-winning, brutally forthright take on a family unraveling after the accidental death of two young siblings. . . . Kramer's sensuous, close observation casts a hypnotic spell on the narrative, leaving the reader unable to put it down until the last word."—Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Pascale Kramer’s riveting page-turner, The Living (translated by Tamsin Black) reveals the ways that lives can change in a matter of seconds.”—Tina Jordan, Entertainment Weekly “The Living [is] an almost perfect example of the depth a ‘small’ novel can encompass. . . . [It is] translated with great acuity by Tamsin Black. . . . The physical specificity and ‘smallness’ of The Living actually makes it, in many senses, a very large novel.”—Britt Peterson, Washington City Paper “Swiss author Pascale Kramer’s novel The Living, the first of her seven novels to be translated into English, is a page-turner from beginning to end. Riveting and meticulous, The Living (translated by Tamsin Black) is the compressed tale of a family struck by tragedy told in prose as austere, precise and unrelenting as a fine Swiss watch.”—Penny Allen, The Oregonian “[The Living] stands as a testimony to Pascale Kramer’s exceptional ability to narrate the heartrending lives of ordinary people, without falling into pathos or exhibitionism. As such, it stands apart from many other contemporary novels, as it details the sadness and anger of a family struck by tragedy, while steering clear of exegesis or epiphany. Even though it tackles somber issues, Kramer’s novel does so with a marked lack of affectation and pathos. Tamsin Black’s translation is flawless, and gracefully renders the psychological tension and mood of the original text.”—Jean-Louis Hippolyte, author of Fuzzy Fiction
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Century of Locusts
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Broken Mirror
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