Margaret Jull Costa’s translation hits not a single false note. The text has an antique finish without being dated, which is true to the spirit of the book; age and relevance, we learn from Dora, are in no way correlated. Lisa’s youth is both eternal and specific. She may dance to the Beatles and imagine the life of a stewardess to be glamorous, but her beauty, precocity, and irreverence are transcendent ... The narrator’s voice is colloquial and familiar, but does not rely on any shorthand (which tends to age badly). Above all, the strangeness of the descriptive voice gives the text a distinctive personality ... without sacrificing the intimacy of the domestic portrait, the novella manages to cast the eye of a worried oracle on an entire nation.
Gracefully translated by Margaret Jull Costa, Dora’s story is illuminating, inspiring, and heartbreaking in equal measures. Fans of Anne Tyler, Marian Keyes, and Christine Féret-Fleury will find themselves absorbed in the novella’s sparse but evocative prose.
