These two short novels have nothing in common except for providing the pleasure of seeing a writer of enormous skill and stylistic grace excel in crafting two very different fictions. "A Simple Tale" traces the life of Maria Poniatowski, a Toronto cleaning woman whose last client has become incapacitated with age and must soon enter a nursing home. Her deterioration marks the end of an era for the 70ish Maria, who reflects on a "simple life" that is soon revealed to consist of a series of horrifying disruptions: her transfer as a teenager from her village in the Ukraine to a series of Nazi labor camps; her arrival in Canada as a displaced person after the war; her son's marriage to the wrong woman; her husband's death. Messud (When the World Was Steady; The Last Life) builds a powerful and resonant story out of the simplest and seemingly most ordinary of domestic details: Maria's teatime with her elderly client, her plastic furniture-covers, a painting of a tropical seascape. "The Hunters" is a world away from Maria Poniatowski's Toronto set in London and narrated by an American academic who has taken to spying on her two downstairs neighbors, a mother and daughter who raise rabbits. "The hunters" is what the daughter, a "suet of a woman," calls the rabbits, adding, "Although they're more like `the hunted,' in this world, wouldn't you say?" Just as a simple life proves more complex and contradictory than one would imagine, so the reversal of hunter and hunted here provides unexpected suspense and plot surprises. These two fine and remarkable novellas, each a modest tour de force, are sure to advance Messud's critical standing and to broaden her readership. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Two novellas told in two distinctly different voices by the author of the highly regarded The Last Life (1999) add up to one compelling reading experience. In "A Simple Tale," Messud portrays Maria Poniatowski, a Ukrainian teenager interred in Nazi work camps who escapes, falls in love with a fellow displaced person in a postwar refugee camp, and immigrates to Canada. Hers truly is a deceptively simple story, for in describing the routines and rituals, as well as the mundane and miraculous events that comprise Maria's daily existence, Messud uncovers hidden complexities. "The Hunters," by contrast, is a neo-Victorian mystery, if only in the mind of Messud's nameless, genderless narrator, an American professor on sabbatical in London who becomes obsessed with an odd young woman living downstairs. Dark and foreboding with a Poelike quality, "The Hunters" follows a sinuous scenario: the young woman appears to be both perpetrator and victim of a murder. Compact yet compelling, Messud's novellas leave you wanting more. --Carol Haggas

The reader gets two for the price of one in this volume of novellas. The first piece, "A Simple Tale," is the story of Maria Poniatowski. Maria was born in the Ukraine and survived World War II in German slave labor camps. Put in a displaced persons camp at the end of the war, she meets her husband, Lev, and together they decide to relocate to Canada to start a new life and raise their young son, Radek. Maria struggles to find her place in the world, first as a cleaning woman, then as a widow. A gap forms between her and Ron, as her son now calls himself, because Maria disproves of his wife, who in Maria's words is not a nice girl. In the second piece, "The Hunters," a nameless English professor is researching death during a dreary summer in London. Alone and depressed, the narrator eliminates most human contact, until the downstairs neighbor, Ridley Wandor, knocks on the apartment door. The narrator becomes enthralled with Ridley, a home health aide, and her tales of a sick mother whom no one ever sees, patients who die with alarming frequency, and a horde of pet rabbits. Both novellas illustrate the frustration of human relations, loneliness, and the veracity of personal histories. Messud's (The Last Life) short novels are well written, intense examinations of isolation that will appeal to readers of literary fiction. Recommended for larger collections. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 3/1/01.] Robin Nesbitt, Columbus Metropolitan Lib., OH (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.