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Searching... Atwater Branch Library (Merced Co.) | Searching... Unknown | Non-Fiction | 362.880 LEI | Searching... Unknown |
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Searching... Visalia Library (Tulare Co.) | Searching... Unknown | Biography | B LEIRIS | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER - "On Friday night you stole the life of an exceptional person, the love of my life, the mother of my son, but you will not have my hate."
On November 13, 2015, Antoine Leiris's wife, Hélène Muyal-Leiris, was killed by terrorists while attending a rock concert at the Bataclan Theater in Paris, in the deadliest attack on France since World War II. Three days later, Leiris wrote an open letter addressed directly to his wife's killers, which he posted on Facebook. He refused to be cowed or to let his seventeen-month-old son's life be defined by Hélène's murder. He refused to let the killers have their way: "For as long as he lives, this little boy will insult you with his happiness and freedom." Instantly, that short Facebook post caught fire, and was reported on by newspapers and television stations all over the world. In his determination to honor the memory of his wife, he became an international hero to everyone searching desperately for a way to deal with the horror of the Paris attacks and the grim shadow cast today by the threat of terrorism.
Now Leiris tells the full story of his grief and struggle. You Will Not Have My Hate is a remarkable, heartbreaking, and, indeed, beautiful memoir of how he and his baby son, Melvil, endured in the days and weeks after Hélène's murder. With absolute emotional courage and openness, he somehow finds a way to answer that impossible question: how can I go on? He visits Hélène's body at the morgue, has to tell Melvil that Mommy will not be coming home, and buries the woman he had planned to spend the rest of his life with.
Leiris's grief is terrible, but his love for his family is indomitable. This is the rare and unforgettable testimony of a survivor, and a universal message of hope and resilience. Leiris confronts an incomprehensible pain with a humbling generosity and grandeur of spirit. He is a guiding star for us all in these perilous times. His message--hate will be vanquished by love--is eternal.
Author Notes
Antoine Leiris is a journalist in Paris, and a former cultural commentator for France Info and France Bleu. You Will Not Have My Hate is his first book.
Translated from French by Sam Taylor, the author of The Republic of Trees, The Amnesiac and The Island at the End of the World. He has translated more than a dozen novels from the French, including Laurent Binet's HHhH and Maylis de Kerangal's The Heart .
Reviews (3)
Kirkus Review
A book that no one would ever want to write proves powerfully, painfully difficult to read.One of the many casualties of the November 2015 terrorist attack on concertgoers at the Bataclan Theater in Paris was Leiris young wife, the mother of their 17-month-old son. His grief transcends any attempt at literary criticism, but his craft as a journalist allows him to focus on detail and avoid the bathos of sentimentality, thus allowing his shellshocked horror to stand on its own. The narrative is written like diary entries, fresh with emotional immediacy, beginning with reports of the attack while he was at home, waiting for his wifes return. Then come his responses, and his responses to other responses, as he comes to terms with his belief that dwelling on hating the perpetrators is not the way to keep his wife alive for him and his son. People ask me if Ive forgotten or forgiven, he writes. I forgive nothing, I forget nothing. I am not getting over anything, and certainly not so quickly. When everyone else has gone back to his or her life, we will still be living with this. This is our story. To refuse it would be to betray it. The fulcrum of the narrative (which spans just under two weeks) is an open letter to the terrorists, posted on Facebook, where he writes, I will not give you the satisfaction of hating you.You have failed. I will not change. Its a complex response to a tragic loss, and while it would be minimizing his loss and grief to call the book cathartic, it is certainly part of a response that allows him to conclude, today, the funeral procession is over. It is toward our new life that we walk. Courageous and inspirational, without a wasted word. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Shortly after Leiris' wife, Hélène, was killed in the November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, he wrote an open letter on Facebook declaring that he and the couple's 17-month-old son, Melvil, would not give those responsible for her death, and that of so many others, the satisfaction of our hate. The moving letter went viral, was picked up by news outlets, and inspired strangers far and wide to send their support to Leiris' sadly shrunken family. In a different life, journalist Leiris would have chosen fiction for his first book, he says, but instead he writes this in the raw days that follow: the date- and time-stamped goings-on of his and Melvil's new life, which feels like another family's story. Though fresh realizations of despair await their every step, Leiris chooses to focus on his wife's absence, and how they'll deal with it: What would I be telling Melvil if I placed the responsibility for the circumstances of our life at someone else's feet? This powerful one-sitting read speaks of a very specific grief to which many in the world feel connected.--Bostrom, Annie Copyright 2016 Booklist
Library Journal Review
With elegant control, narrator Gildart Jackson embodies the words of French journalist Leiris, who bears witness to the murder of his wife, Hélène Muyal-Leiris, one of the victims of the November 13, 2015, terrorist attack at Paris's Bataclan Theatre. Three days later, Leiris wrote directly to her killers via Facebook: "On Friday evening you stole the life of an exceptional person, the love of my life, the mother of my son, but you will not have my hatred." His post went viral, prompting the publication of this memoir less than a year later. Even as he learns to be both mother and father to his 17-month-old child, Leiris faces the everyday reminders of the loss of Hélène's presence. His journalist's training keeps his writing spare but exact, never allowing for a moment of over-indulgence. His is a tribute to his beloved's life, a promise to their precious son, and an indelible declaration against her killers: "For as long as he lives, this little boy will insult you with his happiness and freedom." -VERDICT With hate too easy an option in this current climate of finger-pointing, -Leiris's honorable response to this horrific tragedy becomes a gift of inspiring humanity. ["Leiris is to be commended for not providing easy answers nor engaging in the platitudinous language that too often infects memoirs of this sort.... Necessary reading for all of us": LJ 11/15/16 starred review of the Penguin Press hc.]-Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon, Washington, DC © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.