I normally love Claire Messud and was a bit disappointed by this. The stories were cleverly written but I found that personally they didn't have the same impact her others have - the characters didn't quite come alive to me.

Overall, I thought the two novellas to be well written. The author's style is somewhat cumbersome, but some passages were beautiful and invoked emotions. I believe the style is intentional to describe the loneliness and isolation, which are the subject matters for this work. When the narrators were more upbeat, the writing was lighter and less complicated. I would try another book by Messud. Although her writing in these novellas was a little bleak, it was interesting and well written.

The first short story in this book 'A Simple Tale' was lovely. I would have given it 4 stars on its own. The second story 'The Hunters' was not as good. I found myself skimming through it. I would have given it 2 stars on its own. Therefore I give it 3 stars. I would have loved to have the first story fleshed out a little more and published on its own.

Better than the other Messud in some ways, two very different short novels -- one about Maria, a DP (displaced person) from the Ukraine who settles in Canada after WW2 and sorts out how that has affected her, years after the fact, and another Frankenstinian (if that's understandable) account of a creepy woman's death. The first was quality, the second much more about the strange, partially understood narrator than the weird woman. I felt like the second was a literary exercise turned into novella, and I found that narrator to be more annoying and angsty than Shelley's Frankenstein, which is saying a lot.

I would have given this a 3.75 if I could. The author has an impressive ability to deliver two stories in completely different tones and voices and perspectives. There are overlapping themes of death and loneliness. The first story, A Simple Tale,” is immediately compelling, while the second, “The Hunters,” takes awhile to warm to as the writing style is so cursive as to be at times unreadable. Over time, we accept this as the affectation of the narrator, and the story becomes more complex and interesting. The author has tremendous control of the language, and particularly in the first story the precision of her vocabulary and confidence of style are at their most compelling.

I love Claire Messud, in particular The Emperor's Children, though these two short novels are very good too. I especially liked the second one, The Hunters, about a female academic who spends a summer that's particularly difficult for her for personal reasons in London, sort of doing research. The perspective makes the story mysterious. The narrator's thinking back about the summer with a short remove time-wise, but a big remove in terms of where she is in her life. And we know something bad happened, and that it involves an acquaintance, but we don't know what till late in the story. Plot-wise it's very compelling. And, as is always the case with Messud, the character work in both novels is great-- interiority done well-- as is the line by line writing.

A Simple Tale > The Hunters

A lovely duo of novellas, both involving isolated characters who find themselves removed from life around them. The first, "A Simple Life," was moving and elegiac, the story of a Ukranian immigrant who survived the German work camps and struggles to find a life for herself in Canada. It is told with compassion and an exceptional eye for detail, the prose like a perfectly ironed shirt. It would be a wonderful novella to teach.

The second of the pair, "The Hunters," was more provocative, but I found the prose distracting. Messud loves to cleave her sentences into three-part clauses: "At one time not so very long ago, for reasons that would not be worth explaining, I found myself temporarily installed in a flat on the outer reaches of London's Maida Vale." This is the opening line of the novella, and its rhythm keeps repeating. Frankly, it drove me insane, all of those interjected phrases offset by commas: "I was, needless to say, on my own"; "I was, officially, to have had a companion"; "But this, although it has its reasons, is not my focus." The narrator is an academic, it must be noted, but still. (Do you see what I did there?) I normally love Messud's sentences, but they weren't as crisp or purposeful here. This is unfortunate, because the subject matter of "The Hunters" is rich and fertile terrain.

Much "smaller" than "The Emperor's Children," but just as enjoyable.

Two novellas: one a straightforward tale of a elderly housekeeper in Canada, and the other a postmodern story about an American academic in London. The first is quite lovely; the second is weird.

Claire Messud is incredible. I read this in one sitting because I just couldn't put it down. I don't mean it was super suspenseful, I just mean the writing, the characters were so interesting that I had to keep reading. I absolutely loved this and "The Woman Upstairs", liked "The Emperor's Children", now I'm going to read everything else she has written. It's a sin and a shame she's not a household name like, say, Donna Tartt, who's good, but in my opinion, Messud is much better.

Certainly a minor messud (2 novellas) but I will read anything she writes. I liked the first story best, about a cleaning lady and her relationship with a woman whose house she has cleaned for 40 years.