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    Bitter Almonds
    Unavailable
    Bitter Almonds
    Unavailable
    Bitter Almonds
    Ebook183 pages2 hours

    Bitter Almonds

    By Laurence Cossé

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    From the author of A Novel Bookstore comes this delightful story about friendship across racial and economic barriers set in contemporary Paris.

    Édith can hardly believe it when she learns that Fadila, her sixty-year-old housemaid, is completely illiterate. How can a person living in Paris in the third millennium possibly survive without knowing how to read or write? How does she catch a bus, or pay a bill, or withdraw money from the bank? Why it's unacceptable! She thus decides to become Fadila's French teacher. But teaching something as complex as reading and writing to an adult is rather more challenging than she thought. Their lessons are short, difficult, and tiring. Yet, during these lessons, the oh-so-Parisian Édith and Fadila, an immigrant from Morocco, begin to understand one another as never before, and form this understanding will blossom a surprising and delightful friendship. Édith will enter into contact with a way of life utterly unfamiliar to her, one that is unforgiving at times, but also full of joy and dignity.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherEuropa Editions
    Release dateApr 11, 2013
    ISBN9781787701076
    Unavailable
    Bitter Almonds
    Author

    Laurence Cossé

    Laurence Cossé’s A Novel Bookstore (Europa Editions, 2010), her ninth novel and an Indie Bound bestseller, was described by the San Francisco Chronicle as “marvelous and stimulating.” She was a journalist and critic before devoting herself entirely to fiction. She lives in France.

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    Reviews for Bitter Almonds

    4/5

    11 ratings2 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Fadila Amrani is someone whom it's easy to overlook, or perhaps, look through. She is one of the numerous immigrant women making their living as housekeepers, laundresses, and cooks in middle class households around the world. It is usually only when there is a problem--a misunderstanding due to "broken" language, being late due to a difference in the conception and importance of being prompt, or the inability to read instructions, a receipt, a phone number--that the employer sees the worker, usually to fire them. Like so many of these women, Fadila is illiterate, not only in her new language (Parisian French), but in her old (Berber Arabic) as well.Fadilla's new employer, Édith, is more attuned to language and literacy than most because she is a translator. She also taught her precocious son to read. Surely it wouldn't be too difficult or time-consuming to teach Fadila? But from the beginning, things do not go as Édith expects. Despite her earnest desire to help Fadila learn to read, all her research, and her attempts to cajole Fadila into a regular habit of lessons and homework, Fadila doesn't make progress. Why?The story of Édith and Fadila is one of unlikely friendship, the day to day realities of cultural differences, and the struggles of students trying to learn a new language and their teachers. There is no sweeping plot line, rather the slow character development that comes from the accumulation of the intimate details of life. I enjoyed Bitter Almonds, not least because I, like Édith, have experienced the breakthroughs and disappointments of teaching an older woman my language. In the end, it's the relationship, not the progress, that defines the experience.
    • 4/5
      I suspect that this will be a book that you either enjoy quite a bit or find rather boring; the middle ground doesn't seem particularly likely. Édith is astonished that her immigrant housekeeper, Fadila, is illiterate — or analphabetic, the difference being important to some in the book — and decides to try teaching her to read. And tries. And tries. And tries. And then the book, rather suddenly, ends.So, if it's plot that you're after, it's rather meager and I think this book will not suit you very well. You might want to pass this one by.The meat in this story is to be found by realizing that the plot is simply a vehicle to let us meet Fadila. The advice to Édith about teaching is that it works best when you really know and understand your student. And, so, she acts as our proxy, allowing us to peer over her shoulder, as it were, catching glimpses of a life that is quite different from that of an ordinary Parisian...or, really, any Western...woman. It's a life that has been hard, even devastating, at times. It is one where pleasures and triumphs arrive from things so simple that they could seem mundane to us. Yet, it's a life where dignity and worth have been found, and intrinsically rather than through circumstance. I enjoyed that view and, so, I'm in the first category: enjoying the book that presented it, despite the rather sudden ending.