These three short novels are the first works to appear in English by a remarkable contemporary French author, Marie Redonnet. Born in Paris in 1947, Redonnet taught for a number of years in a suburban "lycee" before deciding to pursue a writing career full time. Since her volume of poetry "Le Mort & Cie" appeared in 1985, she has published four novels, a novella, numerous short stories, and three dramatic works.

In translator Jordan Stump's words, these three novels, "unmistakably fit together, although they have neither characters nor setting in common. Redonnet sees the three novels as a triptych: each panel stands alone, and yet all coalesce to form a whole." Each is narrated by a different woman. "Hotel Splendid "recounts the daily life of three sisters who live in a decrepit hotel on the edge of a swamp; "Forever Valley "is about a sixteen-year-old girl who works in a dance-hall and looks for the dead; "Rose Mellie Rose" is the story of another adolescent girl who assembles a photographic and written record of her life in the dying town of Oat.

Redonnet's novels have been compared to those of Annie Ernaux, Alain Robbe-Grillet, and Samuel Beckett. She has since acknowledged the crucial influence which Beckett's work has had upon her literary work. And yet she is also notably different from the great master of modern literature. "Where Beckett's characters slide almost inevitably toward extinction, resignation, and silence," Stump points out, "Redonnet's display a force for life and creation that borders on the triumphant. . . . They] retain even in the darkest situations a remarkable persistence, openness, and above all hope, a hope that may well be, however unspectacularly, repaid in the end."

These three short novels are the first works to appear in English by a remarkable contemporary French author, Marie Redonnet. Born in Paris in 1947, Redonnet taught for a number of years in a suburban "lycee" before deciding to pursue a writing career full time. Since her volume of poetry "Le Mort & Cie" appeared in 1985, she has published four novels, a novella, numerous short stories, and three dramatic works.

In translator Jordan Stump's words, these three novels, "unmistakably fit together, although they have neither characters nor setting in common. Redonnet sees the three novels as a triptych: each panel stands alone, and yet all coalesce to form a whole." Each is narrated by a different woman. "Hotel Splendid "recounts the daily life of three sisters who live in a decrepit hotel on the edge of a swamp; "Forever Valley "is about a sixteen-year-old girl who works in a dance-hall and looks for the dead; "Rose Mellie Rose" is the story of another adolescent girl who assembles a photographic and written record of her life in the dying town of Oat.

Redonnet's novels have been compared to those of Annie Ernaux, Alain Robbe-Grillet, and Samuel Beckett. She has since acknowledged the crucial influence which Beckett's work has had upon her literary work. And yet she is also notably different from the great master of modern literature. "Where Beckett's characters slide almost inevitably toward extinction, resignation, and silence," Stump points out, "Redonnet's display a force for life and creation that borders on the triumphant. . . . They] retain even in the darkest situations a remarkable persistence, openness, and above all hope, a hope that may well be, however unspectacularly, repaid in the end."

These three short novels are the first works to appear in English by a remarkable contemporary French author, Marie Redonnet. Born in Paris in 1947, Redonnet taught for a number of years in a suburban "lycee" before deciding to pursue a writing career full time. Since her volume of poetry "Le Mort & Cie" appeared in 1985, she has published four novels, a novella, numerous short stories, and three dramatic works.

In translator Jordan Stump's words, these three novels, "unmistakably fit together, although they have neither characters nor setting in common. Redonnet sees the three novels as a triptych: each panel stands alone, and yet all coalesce to form a whole." Each is narrated by a different woman. "Hotel Splendid "recounts the daily life of three sisters who live in a decrepit hotel on the edge of a swamp; "Forever Valley "is about a sixteen-year-old girl who works in a dance-hall and looks for the dead; "Rose Mellie Rose" is the story of another adolescent girl who assembles a photographic and written record of her life in the dying town of Oat.

Redonnet's novels have been compared to those of Annie Ernaux, Alain Robbe-Grillet, and Samuel Beckett. She has since acknowledged the crucial influence which Beckett's work has had upon her literary work. And yet she is also notably different from the great master of modern literature. "Where Beckett's characters slide almost inevitably toward extinction, resignation, and silence," Stump points out, "Redonnet's display a force for life and creation that borders on the triumphant. . . . They] retain even in the darkest situations a remarkable persistence, openness, and above all hope, a hope that may well be, however unspectacularly, repaid in the end."

When Deputy Willy Bost arrives in the mysterious border town of San Rosa, he does not know why he has been sent there or what he will find. What he encounters, gradually, is an obscure network of private and public relations tarnished by corruption, ambition, manipulation, and deceit. Nothing is clear in the workings of this sinister city; and no one, including Willy Bost, is altogether innocent. Murder, bombings, deceptions, seductions--all come to the fore in this spellbinding portrait of a society that seems both absurd and real.

"Nevermore" is Marie Redonnet's fifth novel. Her earlier novels display her talent for capturing the unique voices and personalities of isolated women. "Nevermore" reflects her equally great gift for portraying the workings--and failures--of whole societies.

Born in Paris in 1947, Marie Redonnet taught for a number of years in a suburban lycee before deciding to pursue a writing career full time. Since her volume of poetry "Le Mort & Cie" appeared in 1985, she has published five novels, a novella, short stories, and three dramatic works.

"Candy Story" recounts a turbulent year in the life of Mia, a young woman whose apparent calm is perpetually threatened by inner doubts and outer catastrophe. Her modest dreams of happiness are dashed by the deaths of her mother, old friends, and her lover. Mia is a talented writer, the author of an autobiographical novel. Now, assailed by calamity and misfortune, she struggles with writer's block, confounded--at least for the moment--by the senseless world around her. "Candy Story" is the fourth novel by Marie Redonnet. Translations of the first three--"Hotel Splendid," "Forever Valley," and "Rose Mellie Rose"--are also available from the University of Nebraska Press. In its unadorned prose and passionate focus on the inner life of a young woman, this fourth novel is unmistakably allied to the earlier ones. It will enthrall Redonnet's admirers and win new ones. Born in Paris in 1947, Redonnet taught for a number of years in a suburban "lycee" before deciding to pursue a writing career full time. Since her volume of poetry "Le Mort & Cie" appeared in 1985, she has published four novels, a novella, numerous short stories, and three dramatic works.