A Romeo and Juliet novel with a twist: the lovers are both of the same extended family, one rich and the other poor, one cloistered at the top of the hill with all the trappings of wealth and the other dealing with pogroms, absentee fathers and wicked aunts.Ada Sinner is the poor girl, whose father is a broker, one of those in the social hierarchy who stand between the ghetto-poor and the upwardly mobile. Yet, he is a widower and has to rely in his widowed sister-in-law, Raissa, and her brood, who have come to live with him, to raise Ada. Raisaa has upwardly mobile plans, especially for her older daughter Lilla, and is an uncaring caretaker of Ada. Harry Sinner is the rich Jewish relative living on top of the hill whom Ada falls in love with when she flees to his home during the height of a pogrom in the lower town. And yet she is loved by her cousin Ben, Raissa’s son, a survivor who will bend the rules to earn a buck. The rich and poor members of the Sinner family reach out to each other and the richer ones try to help as best as they can, but societal restrictions of class get in the way. To complicate things, Harry marries a Gentile Frenchwoman, Laurence, but deserts her for Ada, while Ben is taken into the confidence by the wealthy elder Sinners as he is more of a mover and shaker than the genteel Harry. The fickle waters of international banking come into play, Ben makes a gamble that he loses, and Ada is forced to make a choice that involves loss and gain in equal measure. A rather convoluted plot!Although beginning in the Ukraine—from where the Sinners, both rich and poor, move to France to better their prospects—the story turns into a bold exploration of the Jewish hierarchy in France and its assimilation (or not) into mainstream society in that country. The Sinners are intense people: Ben obsesses over making it rich and gaining the approval of the elder Sinners, Raissa worries over Lilla’s future only to see her daughter end up as the mistress of a married man, old Israel Sinner rushes all over the place trying to broker the elusive deal that will feed his extended family, and Ada perseveres in trying and catch Harry’s attention by hook or by crook. The omniscient narrator and the leisurely pace of the narrative dates it. Long gaps in time are covered in a sentence while at other times the author dedicates an entire chapter to a single scene. The scene of the pogrom, related through the eyes of child, is well drawn, although Ada’s long suffering love for Harry and the actions she takes to attract his attention are a bit melodramatic. The novel ends with each getting what they deserve, which makes it rather pat and loses its connection with the maddening unreality of the times, especially when it comes to the fate of the Jews in Europe in the first half of the 20th century. Had Nemirovsky known how inconclusively her own story was to end just a few years later, I wonder whether she would have resorted to writing such tightly crafted novels about Jewish life?
Irène Némirovsky has a strong and poignant style of writing that seems shrewd in its depictions of people and places, but which is none-the-less poetic in its execution. 'The Dogs and the Wolves' focuses on immigrant Jews, much like 'David Golder', and their displacement in French society among the French way of doing absolutely everything. Irène Némirovsky writes in detail in a way that she must have taken from experience as she herself was a Russian Jew who fled Russia during the revolution. The story is simple and nothing like 'David Golder' or 'Suite Française' where you were drawn into the characters and anticipating the events, often shocked or angered by what happened. Here we see Ada, a Jew from the ghetto, who asks of nothing except the basic needs to live, food and water, and even then she needs very little of it. Her lack of wanting fame and riches is humbling as you read and see that maybe to be truly happy one does not need the expensive sofas or dinner plates, but a comfortable room where you can live and work. In truth, I was humbled by her simplistic ways and it brought me further into the story. How it ended is much like how life is lived. You never truly get what you want and when it concerns more than one person you can not account for their wants or needs and how they will address a situation. I admire Irène Némirovsky's style of writing and her view of life. While there seem to be little happy endings in her novels and short stories, it is the breath of life she gives her characters that I believe so compelling. No matter which novel you read, once you have read one you will recognize her voice in all the others in a way one recognizes the sky in every part of the world.
What do You think about The Dogs And The Wolves (2009)?
le mie due stelle (temo in controtendenza) si spiegano con quello che ho pensato ieri sera chiudendo il libro: forse ho attaccato Irène Némirovsky da un lato debole. I cani e i lupi mi ha dato l’impressione di non avere corpo, come se afferrandolo con leggera pressione rivelasse la fragilità di una sfera di carta, una di quelle lampade orientali in carta sottolissima e bacchette flessibili.la scrittura è quasi da fiaba, con una scansione temporale stramba, velocissima per valicare decenni ed eterna nel superare una notte di paura.ed è forse per questa levità stilistica, che ho apprezzato di più la prima parte che racconta dell’infanzia di Ada trai pogrom russi, la fantasia sfrenata, la notte nascosta in un baule.quando Ada diventa grande, sempre rincorrendo un’infatuazione amorosa, mi sembra che la scrittura della Némirovsky non stia più dietro alla storia, o almeno la renda troppo zuccherina, leggermente indigesta.tutto il libro insomma è sotto il segno di una leggerezza sognante, che direi che è la sua cifra e che finisce però per rendere tutto troppo volatile, fino alla dissolvenza.
—Clumsy
I was given this book as a present from my Russia-obssessed friend for my twenty-first birthday. He said he knew I liked historical fiction mixed with romance - which is true - so I immediately thought that I'd love it. But I didn't love it. It was quite dull, with no real depth to the characters or plot. It seemed to brush over everything, jumping from year to year with every chapter that went by but never really getting to know the characters properly. The way the book was written made me feel alienated from them, and when I read, I prefer to feel like the characters could be real people, or my best friends, whom I miss when I'm not reading about them. Perhaps the distance I felt from the storyline and characters was a result of the book having been translated from French - perhaps something was missing in translation. Put simply - I really didn't feel anything special when I read this book, thus the two star rating.
—jessmaggie
La storia di un amore predestinato, deciso dal sangue e dall’innata attitudine al sogno e al desiderio di Ada, donna che condivide con il suo popolo un’eterna mancanza da colmare, un ultimo passo da compiere, un ultimo momento utile per allungarsi ad agguantare la vita. Si tratta di un amore che l’autrice decide saggiamente di non affidare a esplicite descrizioni e che invece viene veicolato da immagini semplici ma profondamente evocative, come quella delle due tele dipinte da Ada nelle quali Harry, il suo predestinato, riesce a ritrovare i profumi dell’infanzia, il germe di una vita in comune che li ha divisi in due ceti diversi ma che non potrà fare a meno di ricongiungerli, seguendo quasi una legge di natura. In questo libro manca la poesia travolgente de “I doni della vita”, e sembra a volte che l’autrice sia stata troppo frettolosa nel concludere un passaggio e nel risolvere una questione. Peccato, perché anche se in questo libro predomina una scelta stilistica meno lirica, si percepisce comunque la poesia dalla quale scaturiscono le storie di questa favolosa scrittrice. Insomma, la storia è bella, ma a tratti si avverte la sensazione che l’autrice avrebbe potuto tranquillamente fare di meglio. Si tratta comunque di un libro necessario se non si può fare a meno, come Ada, di sognare: la vediamo, quasi come il caro Singer con la sua piccola Shosha, distesa su un letto di nuvole a immaginare infiniti futuri colmi d’amore e a dipingerli sulle sue tele piene di neve e di fiori d’estate.
—Fewlas
