The Hunters is a book with two stories. The first story follows a World War II survivor tracing a woman's consciousness from youth through her later years. The story was gripping and I followed it with emotion and passion. The second story was a psychology of fear and suggestibility. I found it hard to follow.

The book is actually two long stories or novella as people in the literary works would like to refer to. Both the stories are very different and quite good to read. Claire has a very unique style of writing that you may start liking instantly if you are a book worm. I enjoyed the experience

was better than the emperor's children but just couldn't seem to get into this author ...

Both stories in this book were totally different; the first one, "A Simple Tale", was very poignant to the point of ripping my heart out. The second novelette "The Hunters", was almost a horror tale and is very haunting. Messud is an incredible author who is not afraid to take chances with her talent. I read "The Emperor's Children" a few years ago and loved it.

I read the second story and that was enough. The prose was actively preventing me from figuring out what the hell the narrator was trying to say. Too many "of courses" and "in my opinions" and other random clauses stuck in for no good reason (ok, yes, it is a successful attempt to convey the character's personality but even though I recognized that, I couldn't stand it). I did find it interesting that the gender of the narrator was never specified, but on the other hand, the author's attempts at avoiding gendered pronouns was unfortunately too clunky and obvious in all of the sections where the "beloved" was mentioned.

Dit boek bevat twee novellen: 'Een eenvoudige vertelling' en 'De jagers'.
'Een eenvoudige vertelling' vertelt het verhaal van de Oekraïense Maria P., die, na haar oorlogservaringen in Duitsland, in Canada een nieuw leven probeert op te bouwen. Het is een verhaal van teleurstelling, melancholie,niet- kunnen-realiseren,... Van sfeer deed het me een beetje denken aan ??? zijn het de boeken van Anita Brookner (ik moet nog eens in mijn kasten rommelen).
'De jagers' gooit het over een heel andere boeg. Een Amerikaanse wetenschapper in Londen geraakt er geobsedeerd door het vreemde gedrag van haar onderburen in een appartementsblok.Stilaan verdenkt ze een van de onderburen een seriemoordenaar te zijn. Van sfeer en opbouw deed me dat dan weer denken aan zo'n typisch Edgar Allan Poe-verhaal, alleen zonder de ultieme ontknoping.'t Is meer een psychologische uitdieping van de personages.
Her en der las ik dat Messud soms verweten wordt te 'academisch' te schrijven. Mij stoorde dit echter niet.
'De kinderen van de keizer' alvast to-read gezet.

Depressing, well written

3.5 stars. I really loved the first novella and felt genuinely sorry when it was over; in fewer than 100 pages, Messud really made me care about those people. But the title novella was a lot harder to embrace, and that decision felt strategic on Messud's part. She created an almost Nabokovian antihero, and because the story is first-person singular, we are limited to this person's POV. Almost maddeningly, we never learn our narrator's name, or even their gender or sexual orientation (although we do know that s/he is fairly flexible on that front, insofar as the "beloved" is described as a different gender than the narrator's previous partner). At any rate, the novella is about how we interpret and even create our own realities, so Messud's daring decision to make her narrator purely a creation of words, or "story," seems consistent with that thought experiment. The narrator does project a lot of personality, with his/her unwieldy but grammatical sentences--fusty, constipated, Jamesian--but it's hard to reconcile the vivid (and consistently unkind) descriptions of other people with the amorphous identity of the nameless, genderless first-person narrator. This is definitely a book that I'm glad I read on paper rather than took in by audiobook because I think I might have gotten lost in all those subordinate clauses.

The “two short novels” in Claire Messud’s The Hunters could have been written by two different authors: the writing style, themes, and tones vary drastically.

The first novella, “A Simple Tale,” centers around Maria, a “displaced person” in Canada (i.e., a WWII-era Ukrainian refugee). She works as a housekeeper, abandoning her old life without fully embracing the new. As she watches her employer deteriorate due to old age, Maria questions the authenticity of the life she’s built in Toronto.

In the second novella, “The Hunters,” an unnamed narrator recounts the summer he (or is it she?) spends researching death in London. S/he grows obsessed with her downstairs neighbor, a dumpy middle-aged woman who lives with her ailing mother and is a professional caregiver. The narrator describes Ridley as needy and aggressive, yet it is the narrator who creates a fantasy world surrounding her.

The premise of the novella is intriguing, but the narrator’s rambling internal dialogue is often confusing and off putting. Scenes with Ridley’s rabbits, the titular Hunters, are bizarrely reminiscent of the Shelley Winters’ camp film What’s the Matter with Helen?

Perhaps what intrigues—and disturbs—me most about Messud’s writing is her choice of vocabulary. Intriguing: her multiple use of the word “fug.” I’m trying to seamlessly weave the word into an everyday conversation. Disturbing: her narrator’s description of Ridley as almost “mongoloid” in appearance. I felt like I was reading a book written by a 90-year-old man and not a young woman.

Messud has an interesting perspective and imagination. Stylistically speaking, I was more comfortable with the straightforward “A Simple Tale” than the sometimes-incoherent “The Hunters,” but I’m impressed with her willingness to take chances as a writer.

Meh. The book was made up of two stories. Both contained so many descriptive sentences that I wanted to skip them. If I did that, there would have been no point in reading the book. I gave it a chance and read the darn thing and I feel like I have wasted my time. Not impressed.

This duo of novellas should have been a much bigger deal than it was. From a craft perspective, they are dizzyingly accomplished. She slyly does not reveal the name or gender of the protagonist of the second book, but you don't notice until the very end, when it becomes significant, and you are left maddeningly to guess.

I liked these two short novels, the first more than the second, but not nearly as much as The Last Life. I actually found The Hunters somewhat difficult to get through.