It’s a lovely rainy day !

hi , today I want to introduce a really beatiful book , Odette Toulemonde by Eric Emmanuel Schmitt . it is a book with five short stories written for women ! i myself didn't get it when i saw this words on the book , but after i read the book i found that it was really written for women to enjoy it , they're not cheap stories at all but when you read the book you will understand that women will enjoy it much more than men !

there will be a biography about Schmitt and some reviews about the book ...

biography :

Within a decade, Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt has become one of the most read and acted French-language authors in the world.
Born in 1960, he attended the prestigious Ecole Normale Supérieure where he was awarded a doctorate in Philosophy and the top French teaching qualification. Schmitt first made a name for himself in the theatre with The Visitor, a play that posits a meeting between Freud and – possibly – God; the work soon became a classic and is now part of international repertoire. Further successes quickly followed, including Enigma Variations, The Libertine, Between Worlds, Partners in Crime, My Gospels and Sentimental Tectonics. Acclaimed by audiences and critics alike, his plays have won several Molières and the French Academy’s ‘Grand Prix du Théâtre’. His works are now played in over 40 countries.

More recently, the four novellas that make up his Cycle de l’Invisible, a series of tales dealing with childhood and spirituality, have met with huge success both on stage and in the bookshops. These are Milarepa, Monsieur Ibrahim and the Flowers of the Koran, Oscar and the Lady in Pink and Noah’s Child. Much of his literary career has been devoted to writing novels. An early novel, The Sect of the Egoists, was followed by novels of light, The Gospel According to Pilate, and shadows, The Alternative Hypothesis. Since then he has written When I was a Work of Art, a whimsical and contemporary version of the Faustus myth and My Life with Mozart, a strikingly original compilation of private correspondence with the Austrian composer. Two short stories collections supplement his works: Odette Toulemonde and Other Stories, celabrating women's quest for happiness and Ostend's Dreamer, a tribute to the power of imagination.

A keen music-lover, Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt has also translated into French The Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni from the original Italian. His fertile imagination continues to open new doors and cast unusual reflections. Odette Toulemonde, the first motion picture he wrote and directed has been running on European screens in 2007.
Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt lives in Brussels and all his French-language works are published by Albin Michel.

Odette Toulemonde and other stories :

With his customary tenderness and never judgingly, Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt brings us a gallerry of unforgettable characters, each one seeking happiness: fron a humble salesgirl to an implacable millionaire; from a thirty-year-old woman with no illusions to a mysterious barefoot princess- with a few ambiguous husbands, cowardly lovers and mothers who suffer from never having daughters throw in.
Eight love stories that explore the whims of destiny and the most intimate secrets of the human heart.

interview with Schmitt about the book :

This is your first volume of short stories…

EES. Short stories are a bit like water colours. You have to waste a lot of paper just to come up with one. In these, I found a style of expression that suited me perfectly: the short-story life. A short story is a life speeded up: you’ve got to tell a whole life in thirty pages. As I prefer suggesting to writing, I felt completely at home.

These stories came about in a curious way…

Yes, while I was filming and editing my film (Odette Toulemonde, with Catherine Frot, out early 2007). When I signed the contract, I was told: “You’re not contracted to write, of course.” Now, that was an incitement!

These stories are all about the quest for happiness?

(He quotes a line from the book.) “It’s a lovely rainy day!” The older I get, the deeper grows a source of inner happiness that is simply my wonder, and almost gratitude, at being alive. But these eight stories are about people’s complexity. None of the characters is rigidly one-sided. There is always the opposite side.

You are not afraid of mystery…

No, nor even of leading my readers to ends that are like trapdoors opening up. I trust my readers’ sensitivity. I’m a doctor in Philosophy, but when I sit down to write, I’m choosing to express myself through fiction, in other words, metaphor. An author has to trigger an impulse, an emotion which the reader then lives with.

Odette Toulemonde was inspired by a genuine encounter?One day, I was signing books on the banks of the Baltic. I was feeling miserable because I was lonely and it was my birthday. A lady came up to me dressed in her best and handed me a letter covered in garlands and angels and with a red foam heart inside. A dreadful thought occurred to me: I thought “Am I worthy of such readers?” An hour later in my hotel room, I opened the letter. It was wonderful, and I spent the night with the foam heart.

Interview by Pierre Vasseur

hope you enjoy the book !