The Misunderstanding

Product Description

The Misunderstanding is Irene Nemirovsky's first novel, written when she was just twenty-one & published in a literary journal two years later. An intense story of self-destructive & blighted love, it is also a tragic satire of French society after the Great War. Yves Harteloup, scarred by the war, is a disappointed young man, old money fallen on hard times, who returns for the summer to the rich, comfortable Atlantic resort of Hendaye, where he spent blissful childhood holidays. He becomes infatuated by a beautiful, bored young woman, Denise, whose rich husband is often away on business. Intoxicated by summer nights & Yves' intensity, Denise falls passionately in love, before the idyll has to end & Yves must return to his mundane office job. In the mournful Paris autumn their love founders on mutual misunderstanding, in the apparently unbridgeable gap between a life of idle wealth & the demands of making a living, between a woman's needs & a man's way of loving. As Denise is driven mad with desire & jealous suspicion, Yves, too sure of her, tortures himself & her with his emotional ambivalence. Taking her sophisticated mother's advice, Denise takes action.. .which she may regret forever. With a sharp satirical eye & a characteristic perception for the fault lines in human relationships, Irene Nemirovsky's first novel shows sure signs of the brilliant novelist she was to become.