Days of Anger

Author: Sylvie Germain

Translator: Christine Donougher   Cover illustration: Lise Weisgerber  

A murdered woman, lying buried in the forests of the Morvan, is the still beating heart of Days of Anger. A rich, eventful saga of blood, angels, obsession and revenge, this marvellous novel is a compulsive, magical read, passionate and spell binding.

James Friel in Time Out

Fans of Angela Carter will relish the latest Gothic romance from her French near equivalent, Sylvie Germain.

Boyd Tonkin in The New Statesman

It reads like Thomas Hardy rewritten by some hectic surrealist and it plants in its rural glades a medieval vitality.

Robert Winder in The Independent

Germain's creations are strong such as Hubert Cordebugler, the despised village knicker-thief who recycles lingerie in his secret love-chamber, and Fat Ginnie, a voluptuous, towering sherry trifle of a woman who gives birth to a strapping son every Feast of Assumption. An icon for women of substance everywhere.

Geraldine Brennan in The Observer

Days of Anger is a classic modern French novel, mixing Gothic and Greek tragedy in a remote wooded area of France. Ambroise Maupertuis witnesses an altercation between Vincent Corvol and his wife Catherine and blackmails him into handing over his forests and his daughter Claude to marry Maupertuis’ son Ephraim. Ephraim prefers the gargantuan Fat-Ginnie and is disowned and disinherited by his father when he marries her and they produce nine sons, all born on 15 August. Maupertuis makes Marceau, his second son, marry Claude and they have a daughter Camille, the spitting image of her grandmother Catherine. However, when Camille finally grows up and meets the nine brothers, things go drastically wrong. This is a superb poetic novel which deservedly has a great reputation in France

John Alvey in The Modern Novel