These two novellas are very thought provoking. One review likened the second story, "A Simple Tale" to an Alfred Hitchcock movie with it's twists and ambiguity. I agree, it kept you guessing and at the end, you still didn't have the answers.

Two novellas. I liked the second one better (the Hunters), but they were both good. Interesting that in The Hunters, the gender of the protagonist is never revealed. Not sure if that's significant but it made for fun reading. It's a testament to Messud's mastery that the writing never seems awkward in her attempts to avoid pronouns.

Though I enjoyed the first of the two stories contained in this volume, I didn't care much for the second. It seemed too deep for me. The first was enjoyable only halfway into the story. She is a fantastic writer. I acknowledge that. Although her writing isn't quite my style. So while I give two stars, I do not deny this writer has talent.

There are two stories here, both quiet and sad. “A Simple Tale” is about a Ukrainian woman who emigrates to Canada with her husband and works as a housekeeper. She makes a connection with a very old lady, who is irascible and strange and who finally dies. The second story “The Hunters” is about a female professor who rents an apartment near London in a sort of seedy neighborhood and acquires a strange relationship with an odd woman who lives downstairs with a bunch of rabbits and her mother, who is never seen. An odd tale which has an uncertain ending.

Two novellas beautifully written. Both of them were very compelling stories of seemingly “ordinary” women living ordinary lives. But, were they really?

I love Claire Messud's books, just not this one.

A great novella to read with a book group. It's short, thought provoking, and the writing is impeccable. Our group spent way too much time deliberating about whether the narrator was a woman or a man as the gender is never formally revealed. But there is so much more to discuss. Some readers found the book a bit academic/pedantic, but it's good to be challenged once in a while. I would have never read this on my own.

When I read "A Simple Tale", I was quite disappointed. For me, it had no life. It was well written but seemed detached---ordinary. I was reluctant to start on "The Hunters" and was prepared to abandon it if it continued in the same vein, but lo and behold---the story was full of life and emotion and acute observation. How could this be? I reflected that it seemed like two different authors---and then I noticed a crucial difference in how the stories were told. The first story was written in the third person and the second was written by the narrator---much more personal. Two stars (5.5/10) for the first story and five stars (9/10) for The Hunters.
7.5/10

im def not the target audience, my mom gave me this on a trip and the first one was so well written I fell in love with it. the ending was so concise (which I never see happen in short stories) and I thought it was so sad but such a good story. (the fact she didn't even know her husbands story hurttttt!!) (4/5)


the second book was so boring and bad and full of run on sentences (1/5)

This is a 2 for 1 as the book contains 2 novellas. The first is called A Simple Tale and it is essentially. The trauma of it (WWII camp) is distanced by the matter-of-fact narration and the protagonist's work ethic and lack of instrospection. As a young girl, Maria Poniatowski is OST, "taken" from the Ukraine to a Nazi work camp for the duration of the war. She is then a DP living in a refugee camp until she is repatriated in Canada with the Polish husband (Lev) she met in the camp and the baby they conceived. Now she is an immigrant and she and her husband find work, move forward and leave the past behind. She becomes a cleaning lady and her relationship with her clients, especially Mrs. Ellington forms the majority of the story. How the two old women strive to live in the present and form a friendship that transcends class is part of it, as well as the dashed dreams for Maria's only son Rod who should have thrived in a new place given all the advantages of a stable family and country. Maria is clearly a heroine, though vastly understated and underappreciated and her story in all its different parts, "like the fragments of a broken mirror" form a whole that reminds us of the underlying tales of the "least, the last, and the lost."
The second story, the Hunters is well-written but wordy. Understated pyschological drama - mostly interior - for the narrator who is taking a summer sabbatical in London to research her book about death. She has just left a relationship, about which we get no information, but it has taken a toll, as does her subject matter and her abject alone-ness. She gets a flat in a borderline part of town and loves the space itself with its feeling that "someone was happy here" but that soon becomes tainted by the narrator's imagination and her acquaintance with the downstairs neighbor, Ridely Wandor. She is an unattractive woman of indeterminate age who is a carer for the elderly by profession and for her own mother in particular. The title refers rather obliquely to the rabbits the Wandors keep which are their own symbol to decipher. Ridley confides to the narrator that her elderly patients keep dying on her in short order. The narrator, in her own fragile mental state begins to conjure this info into all sorts of scenarios in her mind, none of them seemly. "...I slowed, hibernant, in isolation, and my morbid imagination turned the cememtary soil like any professional gravedigger." p. 144 Ridley is rather needy, so on the few occasions the two meet, the narrator is elevated to "good friend" status, though doesn't share that opinion. The narrator returns to the US when summer ends and moves on with her life in a triumphant fashion comparing this trip to a chrysalis from which she emerges a different person. She doesn't give Ridley another thought until she returns to London with her new lover a year later and comes to know the truth of her story which is way off the mark from her imagination. A cautionary tale about judging by appearance, isolating, and living in your own mind.

I was surprised when this was split into two different stories. I liked the set-up and even though the stories were rather short they did not leave any loose ends really. I liked the book and would recommend it to others. Quite the meaningful plot lines going along with the theme I seemed to have picked out of my boss' book donations.

Two novellas, the first I liked much more than the second. The second I just wanted her to get to the point already, and it wasn't until reading the notes for discussion at the end that I realized it had some interesting constructs built in. But not so interesting that I wondered about them while I was reading it, I guess.