Research Catalog

Title

The girl from the Chartreuse / Pierre Péju ; translated from the French by Ina Rilke.

Author

Péju, Pierre, 1946-

Publication

London : Harvill Press, 2005.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Additional Authors

Rilke, Ina

Description

165 p.; 21 cm.

Summary

Etienne Vollard, owner of the bookshop The Verb To Be, is a red-haired man imprisoned in an enormous body and his solitude. One wet afternoon, driving a vanload of books, he knocks down and seriously injures a little girl, Eva. In the hospital, he meets Eva's mother, Therese, a struggling single parent who lacks maternal instincts and whose dream is to be far away, alone. Both are haunted by guilt: Therese 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 Eva). Vollard visits Eva regularly while she is in a coma and reads books to her, while Therese spaces her visits out. When Eva eventually wakes up, she has become mute and is terribly weakened. A few weeks after Eva has been sent to a rehabilitation centre in the Massif de la Chartreuse, Therese gets a job far away and asks Vollard to visit her daughter on her behalf. However, nothing seems to help "La Petite Chartreuse"--Vollard calls Eva that way in reference to the monastic order of the Chartreux - to enjoy life again. She becomes weaker every day to such a point that Vollard decides to find Threse and to take her back to her daughter before it is too late ...

Uniform Title

Petite Chartreuse. English

Alternative Title

Petite Chartreuse.

Subject

• Traffic accident victims > Fiction
• Giants (Folklore) > Fiction
• Guilt > Fiction

Genre/Form

Fiction

Note

• Originally published as La petite Chartreuse: Paris : Gallimard, 2002.

Language (note)

• Translated from the French.

ISBN

1843431920

OCLC

• 57639458
• SCSB-10734885

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library