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Today, "Marie et Marya" by Jillian Cantor, published on April 12, 2022 by Éditions Préludes.
Emily Café Powell, contributor to the 20 Minutes
Books reading group
, recommends
Marie et Marya
by Jillian Cantor, published on April 13, 2022 by Éditions Préludes.
His favorite quote:
I wanted to continue my studies in Paris, but I also wanted to be with the man I loved.
And I made a choice.
Why this book?
Because it is a historical novel that is both precise and romantic,
which immerses us in the life (with its aspirations, its doubts, its bereavements, its joys) of a leading scientific personality, whose name we all know but very little life.
It's meticulously documented, but this book reads with the passion of a novel!
Because the alternative history proposed by the author is interesting
and well conducted: Marya's evolution mirrors that of Marie, certain events, certain encounters seem to want to continue her.
Amazing how things could have turned out...
Because it is a resolutely feminist novel:
the two characters, the real as the fantasized, must fight to assert themselves in a world of men relatively hostile to women.
Marie struggles to be recognized as a scientist in the same way as her husband, Marya makes the education of women in a country where it is forbidden the cause of her life...
Because
Marie et Marya
very accurately explores
questions as vast as mourning, love, destiny and motherhood, in addition to being a true ode to science and research.
The depth of these themes is a perfect setting for the two main characters of this novel, interconnected facets of the same woman...
The essentials in 2 minutes
The plot.
In Poland, at the end of the 19th century, a young woman hesitates between two choices: to stay in her country and get married, or to study in France.
In real life, this woman went to Paris and became… Marie Curie!
But what would her life have been like if she had chosen otherwise?
Characters.
The novel describes the real life of Marie Curie, the famous scientist with two Nobel Prizes.
As for Maria?
It is an alternative version of Marie Curie, who would have stayed in Poland, would have married and would never have become… Marie Curie.
Places.
The novel takes us to a Poland occupied by Russia, plagued by misery, where women are not allowed to study.
But we also discover the Paris of the Belle Epoque, more open but resolutely macho!
The time.
The novel opens in 1891 and ends in the 1930s, when Marie Curie died.
The author.
Jillian Cantor is American, and this is her second novel translated into French.
This book was read with
a certain melancholy because neither the life of Marie, nor that of Marya are ultimately particularly happy!
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