{"product_id":"a-sunday-in-villedavray-isbn-9781635420456","title":"A Sunday in Ville-d'Avray","description":"\u003cb\u003eIn this subtly haunting novel, a married woman confesses her encounter with a mysterious man, which threatens the stilted calm of life in a Paris suburb.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Echoing the acclaimed and unsettling film \u003ci\u003eSundays and Cybèle\u003c\/i\u003e from 1962, \u003ci\u003eA Sunday in Ville-d’Avray \u003c\/i\u003eis suffused with the same feeling of disquiet: Two sisters meet as the light is fading in a detached house in Ville-d’Avray, each filled with the memory of their childhood hopes and fears, their insatiable desire for the romantic, for wild landscapes worthy of Jane Eyre, and for a mad love, all concealed beneath the appearance of a sensible life. Claire Marie, considered by most to be a dreamy, passive sort of person, suddenly breaks from the everyday by confiding in her sister about an unlikely meeting in this seemingly peaceful provincial town. To her listener’s amazement, she tells of her wanderings around the Fausses-Reposes forest, the Corot Ponds, and the suburban train stations, and the lurking dangers she encountered there.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn this arresting novel reminiscent of Simenon, Dominique Barbéris explores the great depths of the human soul, troubled like the waters of the ponds.“Beautifully rendered…[with] a cinematic, atmospheric quality…Barbéris’s cautious but tense novel is a subtle game of hide and seek.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Guardian \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “Provocative…A study of desire and contentment, time and expectation, this slim novel raises alluring questions about paths not taken…fans of Patrick Modiano will appreciate this.” —\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “Gorgeously, absorbingly atmospheric; like being wrapped up in an Antonioni film.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Times \u003c\/i\u003e(UK)\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “Beguiling and immensely enjoyable because of the beautifully observed details.” —\u003ci\u003eIrish Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “A disquisition on the nature of truth and memory, the little we ever know about other people, and the harm this brings…an unsettling tale, suffused with menace…poetic.” —\u003ci\u003eTimes Literary Supplement \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “There’s no high turret of emotion, but rather the wandering of an apprehensive heart: excited, romantic, secret, with an undercurrent of disappointment and mystery, all bound up in Barbéris’s atmospheric prose that maps the unrealized dreams of women.” —\u003ci\u003eLiterary Hub\u003c\/i\u003e, Most Anticipated Books of the Year\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “Enticing…[a] fortuitous opportunity to experience the lives of two sisters on a quaint Sunday in Ville-d’Avray.” —\u003ci\u003eFree Lance–Star\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “Carried by a subtle writing style that transforms the tiniest details, \u003ci\u003eA Sunday in Ville-d’Avray\u003c\/i\u003e is a beautiful novel about staying true to the dreams of youth and the need for adventure that can sometimes be found just at the end of the street.” —\u003ci\u003eFrance-Amérique\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“When I opened this lovely novel, I fell into it as if I were in a trance, reading spellbound in one fell swoop. An eerie, unsettling story about the murkiness of truth and memory, and the difficulty of truly knowing another person, \u003ci\u003eA Sunday in Ville-d’Avray \u003c\/i\u003ehas haunted me since I finished the last page.” —Katrina Kittle, bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eThe Kindness of Strangers\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“In \u003ci\u003eA Sunday in Ville-d’Avray\u003c\/i\u003e, Dominique Barbéris masterfully summons a world of ice, shadow, light, and darkness out of the Parisian suburbs. Two sisters create a prism of a narrative about what happens when we hope for something else, and the thrill and danger of subconscious desire. The resulting story is brilliant, reading like a chilly, poetic dream bound to come true.” —Jardine Libaire, author of \u003ci\u003eWhite Fur\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eA Sunday in Ville-d’Avray \u003c\/i\u003eis a mesmerizing tale of sisters, suburbia, and secrets. With evocative prose and a deep understanding of memory and family, author Dominique Barbéris spins a simple Sunday visit between adult sisters into a complex narrative about the dreams and desires of midlife women. Set aside a Sunday afternoon, pour yourself a glass of something, and dive into this subtle but haunting novel.” —Lian Dolan, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Sweeney Sisters\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“In a year with no days, the exquisite \u003ci\u003eA Sunday in Ville-d’Avray \u003c\/i\u003eprecisely captures the haunted feeling of a bygone Sunday, the afternoon already too late, and the bittersweet homesickness of a moment’s end. This wistful novel, a sunbeam illuminating the rain-soaked moments of someone else’s ordinary tragedy, will stay with you for weeks.” —Barbara Bourland, author of \u003ci\u003eFake Like Me\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eI’ll Eat When I'm Dead\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Quiet but suspenseful, \u003ci\u003eA Sunday in Ville-d’Avray\u003c\/i\u003e tells the story of two sisters. As one sister recounts a strange episode from years before, the other’s perceptions begin to change. It’s an atmospheric and brooding novel, with secret desires and hidden regrets, images of Paris and its suburbs, and Barbéris’s prose evoking the psychological suspense of Henry James and Anita Brookner. Perfect for fans of Tessa Hadley and Alice Munro.” —Sarah McCraw Crow, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Wrong Kind of Woman\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eA Sunday in Ville-d’Avray \u003c\/i\u003eis an exquisite inquiry into the nature of longing. Atmospheric, eloquent, and tinged with danger, it’s the perfect way to spend a Sunday. Simply, I loved this book.” —Erika Swyler, author of \u003ci\u003eLight from Other Stars \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eThe Book of Speculation\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Brimming with compassion and stylistically superb, \u003ci\u003eA Sunday in Ville-d’Avray \u003c\/i\u003ebrilliantly captures how turmoil often simmers under a calm surface. As one sister confides in the other, both contemplate what it means to live in the center versus on the periphery of a city and of one’s own life. A captivating, haunting read.” —Rajia Hassib, author of \u003ci\u003eA Pure Heart\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“What a beautiful and sly book this is—it casts a hypnotic spell readers won’t want to wake from, especially those who dream of France, of secrets, of the mysterious paths desire has us take.” —Liam Callanan, author of \u003ci\u003eParis by the Book\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“The experience of \u003ci\u003eA Sunday in Ville-d’Avray\u003c\/i\u003e is less like reading a novel and more like falling in step with a real person, living a life both familiar and distinct, utterly credible and completely immersive. If you are a Francophile, if you disdain the suburbs, if you live in the suburbs, if you have or ever wanted a sibling…this book is for you.” —Elizabeth Topp, author of \u003ci\u003ePerfectly Impossible\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Superb...Dominique Barbéris’s novel conjures the smell of grass after rain, of dead leaves burning in a backyard, the mild, melancholy scents of the Parc de Saint-Cloud at the start of autumn.” —\u003ci\u003eSud Ouest\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“An unsettling text on memory and the marks of regret...a novel with a singular evocative power.” —\u003ci\u003eLe Monde des livres\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“This atmospheric novel plunges us into the folds of our own emotions thanks to a richly evocative style...It has the troubling melancholy of Modiano’s novels and the charm of Rohmer’s films.” —\u003ci\u003eGael\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eDominique Barbéris\u003c\/b\u003e is a French novelist. Her first book, \u003ci\u003eLa Ville\u003c\/i\u003e, was published by Arléa in 1996. Eight further books have been published by Gallimard. \u003ci\u003eLes Kangourous\u003c\/i\u003e was adapted for film by Anne Fontaine under the title \u003ci\u003eEntre ses mains\u003c\/i\u003e. \u003ci\u003eQuelque chose à cacher\u003c\/i\u003e won the Prix des Deux Magots and the Prix de la Ville de Nantes in 2008. In 2018 her novel \u003ci\u003eL’année de l’éducation sentimentale\u003c\/i\u003e was awarded the Prix Jean-Freustié \/ Fondation de France. Barbéris also teaches writing workshops at the Sorbonne.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eJohn Cullen \u003c\/b\u003e(1942–2021)\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003eis the translator of many books from Spanish, French, German, and Italian, including Siegfried Lenz’s \u003ci\u003eThe Turncoat\u003c\/i\u003e, Juli Zeh’s \u003ci\u003eEmpty Hearts\u003c\/i\u003e, Patrick Modiano’s \u003ci\u003eVilla Triste\u003c\/i\u003e, Kamel Daoud’s \u003ci\u003eThe Meursault Investigation\u003c\/i\u003e, and Philippe Claudel’s \u003ci\u003eBrodeck\u003c\/i\u003e.The other Sunday, I went to see my sister.  \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eMy sister lives in Ville-d’Avray, \u003c\/i\u003ein the western suburbs of Paris. She shares a comfortable house with Christian, her husband, and their daughter: big garden, with lawns and flower beds, in a residential neighborhood. One of those streets that climb the hills near the Parc de Saint-Cloud. As I live in the center of Paris, we seldom see each other and I rarely visit her. Luc says, “Going to see your sister is an expedition.”\u003cbr\u003e But that’s not true, the distance isn’t the only issue. I know very well that there’s regular train service to Ville-d’Avray. The truth is that Luc doesn’t like Ville-d’Avray, and that he finds my sister “boring”; it would be more accurate to say that he’s suspicious of her. Her husband Christian’s a physician in a group practice. For a brief time she was a high school teacher, like me, but she doesn’t work anymore. She helps Christian in his practice, in a vague sort of way. Sometimes, when he needs her, she fills in at the reception desk, treats people with ordinary symptoms over the phone, or directs anxious patients to the hospital, but that’s not what you’d call work. “And between us,” says Luc, “I don’t trust your sister’s ability to diagnose patients; she always seems to be ‘elsewhere.’ Your sister,” says Luc, “has never had her feet on the ground. It’s a family trait.” \u003cbr\u003eAt that point Luc and I usually have an argument. We have an argument every time we talk about our respective families.\u003cbr\u003e   \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eAs I was leaving Paris \u003c\/i\u003ethat Sunday, I calculated how many months it had been since we’d last spoken to each other, my sister and I. Luc was attending a seminar, or claimed to be attending a seminar. I had my doubts on the subject. To be more precise, for some time I’d been suspicious of his relationship with a woman from our circle of friends, Fabienne, an academic. In any case, I’d had enough of Paris; the city was hot and polluted. \u003cbr\u003eThe season was moving on. It was, I remember, a Sunday in the beginning of September, one of those days that cross the border between summer and fall.\u003cbr\u003e Some of the houses in the neighborhoods I passed through were still closed up—proof that their owners hadn’t yet returned from summer vacation—but there were flowers in the gardens. Flowers blooming in untended gardens, all by themselves. You could sense everywhere, much more than in Paris, the sort of languid stretching and immobility characteristic of plants in the fall. There were fewer red roses than pale-pink ones—red roses, despite their more pronounced color and their stronger scent, don’t last as long. They seem to wear themselves out.\u003cbr\u003e Maybe it’s the color that wears out the roses.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eI passed a station, \u003c\/i\u003eI don’t remember which one, where the people getting off a train from Paris stood out behind the railing that separated the platform from the street like figures silhouetted against a background of sky. You got the impression that they were hesitating, they didn’t know where to go. The train left again; it was typical of Sunday, all that, the degree of blankness, of slight uncertainty, of vague apprehension (connected to uncertainty) that characterizes a Sunday; I put on my sunglasses and told myself that despite the fine weather, despite what was left of summer, you could always recognize a Sunday afternoon. \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eOn Sunday evenings \u003c\/i\u003ewhen my sister and I were children and our family lived in Brussels, Mama was often nervous. Night fell faster than it did on the other days of the week, especially in winter, and it was preceded by a damp fog. We’d be brought to the park; we’d be required to walk around the lake, to “get some fresh air.” “Walk fast and breathe through your noses—if you don’t, you’ll inhale the dampness, you’ll get sore throats, and I have no intention of taking care of you.” We’d go up on the Japanese bridge and throw bread to the swans. Mama would watch us from a distance, clutching her fur collar tight with both gloved hands. On the avenue that bordered the park, the streetlamps would come on one by one; we liked the way those lights, magnified by the foggy mist, shone in the night; we could feel their chilly poetry, but on the way back we’d walk “as though we were walking on eggshells,” with a strange pang in our hearts. We knew what the rest of the evening would be like. It was the same every Sunday: when we got back home, Mama would reproach Papa, who’d stayed home to read the newspaper, for the boredom and the household chores with which marriage had filled her life. Those reproaches were exacerbated by our life in Belgium; our life in Belgium greatly exacerbated the Sunday evening anxiety in our home. For example, the neighbors in the apartment above ours, a Belgian couple (the Kacenelenbogens), were content with café au lait and \u003ci\u003etartines de cassonade\u003c\/i\u003e, slices of bread spread with butter and brown sugar, for Sunday dinner. From this practice Mama would draw an argument: if we could only have been Belgians, real Belgians, free from French complications in matters regarding \u003ci\u003ela cuisine\u003c\/i\u003e, we would have eaten \u003ci\u003etartines de cassonade \u003c\/i\u003elike the Kacenelenbogens, and she wouldn’t have had to tire herself out. She’d slam the kitchen door; she’d say that Sundays were unbearable, and that her life was a failure. \u003cbr\u003eAs for the neighbors below us (the Van Huysts), they had made some comments on the noise coming from the floor above their heads. We were required to wear slippers with felt soles inside the apartment. Sometimes we’d pretend to skate on the floor in the hall, as if on a Dutch canal. We’d go over our poems. Monday was recitation day, so we always went over our poems the night before. I haven’t forgotten the ones we learned; they seemed fitting for Sunday, for the gray, cloudy weather. There was the one that started, “Here’s the wind, the wild November wind,” and also one by Théo- phile Gautier called “Autumn Song”: \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eRain bubbles on the garden pond. \u003cbr\u003eThe swallows gathered on the roof \u003cbr\u003eConfabulate and correspond.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Reciting the poems gave me a delicate pleasure, delicate and a little sad.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eOur apartment was very silent. \u003c\/i\u003eThe silence would weigh on us, and we’d ask permission to turn on the television set and watch Thierry la Fronde, Terry the Sling. In those days, like all the girls of our generation, we were in love with Thierry la Fronde; I’m tempted to say like all the \u003ci\u003enormal \u003c\/i\u003egirls of our generation, but sometimes I wonder if our childhood, my sister’s and mine, was normal.\u003cbr\u003e No one’s childhood is really normal, I suppose. \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eSpeaking of Thierry la Fronde, \u003c\/i\u003ea good many years ago I saw the actor Jean-Claude Drouot onstage, in a performance of Chekhov’s play \u003ci\u003eUncle Vanya\u003c\/i\u003e. Drouot played the title role, but it was hard to believe him. He wore the rumpled white linen suit that in the imagination of French directors represents the way Russian landowners dressed in summer on their birch-wooded estates. He had aged, which shocked me; even so, he didn’t look at all like a Russian landowner. He looked as though he was still roaming, with his jerkin, his sling, and his companions, through the forests of French public television (ORTF, as it was in our day). It was a weird feeling that lasted, in my case, for the whole performance, as if Chekhov’s melancholy had suddenly replaced the memory of our Sunday afternoons in front of the television.\u003cbr\u003e I was sitting in the third row of the orchestra, and while the play was going on, I spoke to the actor in my mind. I said to him, \u003ci\u003eYou just can’t fool us\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e (Or was it \u003ci\u003eYou just can’t make us forget\u003c\/i\u003e?)\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eWe had tender hearts \u003c\/i\u003eand lots of imagination. Two or three years later, Jane Eyre’s alarming “master,” the formidable and gloomy Mr. Rochester, succeeded Terry the Sling. Rochester too appeared to us on the small screen one afternoon, in an old Hollywood adaptation of the novel. He made such an impression that I can still see him arriving, a horseman riding on the fog, his burly silhouette, his cape like a Gothic king’s, his curly black hair, which he pushes off his pale forehead as he asks, “\u003ci\u003eJane, do you find me handsome?\u003c\/i\u003e” \u003cbr\u003eThe answer floored us: “\u003ci\u003eNo\u003c\/i\u003e,” Jane boldly says.\u003cbr\u003e That was surely on a Sunday (Sunday was television day). The living room was filled with late afternoon darkness. Crows were circling the chimneys of Thornfield; sounds of rattling chains echoed in the corridors. Our knees were weak, our eyes bulging, our mouths slightly open, when Mama opened the door: “Close your mouths, don’t slump on the sofa. Have you learned your recitations? I want to hear you recite in ten minutes.”\u003cbr\u003e We were going to recite “The Wild November Wind” and “Rain bubbles on the garden pond.” But it was too late; the damage had been done; it would last. Thierry la Fronde, newly perceived as dull and scrawny, got tossed into the dustbin of childhood. Now we dreamed of being afraid; we dreamed of a gloomy man our father’s age, with wide nostrils, Orson Welles’s head (Welles played Rochester), and the look of a half-caste king. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eThere was one scene \u003c\/i\u003ewe were especially fond of: Jane’s spoiled wedding. It would suggest to my sister the scenario of a game that I describe here to give an idea of what our childhood was like (and which, naturally, I keep secret from Luc): it consisted in wrapping ourselves up in one of the transparent curtains that decorated the window in our room. This window, situated just above the radiator, overlooked the courtyard of our apartment building, a courtyard where there was absolutely nothing to see: some garages and the roofs of other buildings, bristling with TV antennas. Nobody could guess what we were doing. Or—to be fair—people outside could naturally suppose we were misbehaving. They could figure we were sunk in the glum and guilty boredom of children, the boredom of Sunday evenings.\u003cbr\u003e Nothing was further from the truth: our hearts were pounding because we’d just put on our “wedding veils.” Unmoving and veiled, our noses in the sheer curtains, which smelled (I remember) like dust and new fabric, our knees hot from the radiator, singing softly (a diversionary tactic), we’d stand in spirit “before the altar,” \u003ci\u003ebetrothed\u003c\/i\u003e, hand in hand with a gloomy, “olive-skinned,” no-longer-young man. “Does anyone know of an impediment to this marriage?” the priest would ask.\u003cbr\u003e A voice would cry out from the back of the church: “Stop! The marriage cannot take place. Mr. Rochester has a living wife.”\u003cbr\u003e “Proceed,” Rochester would say to the clergyman.\u003cbr\u003e He’d bring us back to the manor house, squeezing our hands in his “grasp of iron.” He’d open the door to the hidden room, guarded by a certain Grace Poole, and reveal to us his secret: a woman kept under lock and key, a disgusting red-faced gorgon with unkempt hair, neighing like a beast, our rival.\u003cbr\u003e “That is my wife,” he’d say; “Such is the sole conjugal embrace I am ever to know \u003ci\u003e. . . \u003c\/i\u003eAnd this is what I wished to have,” turning toward us, “this young girl, who stands so grave and quiet at the mouth of hell.”\u003cbr\u003e That’s what we were doing, my sister and I, under the curtains on Sunday evenings. We were standing, grave and quiet, at the mouth of hell.","brand":"Other Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46305046528229,"sku":"NP9781635420456","price":20.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781635420456.jpg?v=1767720831","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/a-sunday-in-villedavray-isbn-9781635420456","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}