Noiville, Florence 1961- (Florence Hirsch)

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Noiville, Florence 1961- (Florence Hirsch)

PERSONAL:

Born July 23, 1961, in Boulogne Billancourt, France; married; husband's last name Hirsch. Education: Attended HEC School of Management, and Paris Institute of Political Studies; received advanced law degree.

CAREER:

Writer, 1998—. Journalist for Bayard Presse, 1986-93, Okapi, and Je bouquine; Le Monde, freelance journalist and literary critic; Monde des Livres, editor in chief.

WRITINGS:

(With Jacqueline Duhême) Passion couleurs, Gallimard Jeunesse (Paris, France), 1998.

(With Jean Bernard and Serge Bloch) A quoi sert la médecine?, Seuil, 1999.

(With Bernard Bardin, Yvon-Marcel Fargeas, and Anni Horine-Borzeix) Paul Faucher 1898-1967: Un Nivernais inventeur de l'album moderne, Conseil Général de la Nièvre, 1999.

La mythologie grecque, Actes Sud, 2000.

Les héros grecs, illustrated by Christine Noiville, Actes Sud jeunesse, 2002.

(As Florence Hirsch) Je cherche les clés du paradis, illustrated by Philippe Dumas, L'Ecole des loisirs, 2002.

La mythologie romaine, illustrated by Serge Ceccarelli, Actes Sud, 2003.

Histoires insolites des saints et des fêtes du calendrier, illustrated by Christine Noiville, Actes Sud, 2004.

Petites histoires de derrière les fourneaux, illustrated by Christine Noiville, Actes Sud, 2006.

Isaac B. Singer: A Life, translated by Catherine Temerson, Farrar, Straus & Giroux (New York, NY), 2006.

SIDELIGHTS:

In Isaac B. Singer: A Life, Le Monde journalist and literary critic Florence Noiville reveals the life story of the Nobel Prize-winning Jewish author who grew up the son of a rabbi in a Polish shtetel and who won his reputation writing in Yiddish (a language virtually killed off by the Holocaust) in the United States in the 1950s and 60s. "But Singer was never truly comfortable with his eminence," declared D.T. Max in the New York Times. "Beneath his charm he was bitter, manipulative with women, someone uncomfortable in his own skin. As Noiville points out, sometimes he even referred to himself as ‘the pig,’ a name that … other Yiddish writers reserved for him." "Singer's tales of Orthodox Jewish life," explained Los Angeles Times reviewer Jeffrey Meyers, "opened an astonishing new world to American readers."

Because of Singer's personal reticence, biographies of him are few; personal accounts have been written by his son (whom he abandoned in Poland before he left for the United States) and by one of his many mistresses, but biographers have largely relied on biographical detail revealed in his stories and novels. Noiville takes a more journalistic approach, stated Floyd Skloot in the Boston Globe, "she approaches Singer in the manner of a biojournalist, traveling to Poland, visiting places associated with Singer. Her findings, as when she tours Leoncin, where Singer was born, are stark: ‘Not a trace of its former Jewish life remains.’ In Radzymin, where Singer moved at the age of 4, when his father became the rabbi there, Noiville discovers that ‘no one here knows Singer and no one seems to pay attention to his childhood home.’" In the process, wrote a Publishers Weekly contributor, "Noiville paints a respectful, worthy portrait of the penniless immigrant who became a brilliant writer." She "cannot always explain Singer's complexity or universal adoration," Steve Weinberg concluded in Booklist, "but her effort to understand is illuminating."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Scholar, winter, 2007, Benjamin Balint, "Poised between the Ancient and the New," p. 145.

Booklist, September 15, 2006, Steve Weinberg, review of Isaac B. Singer: A Life, p. 16.

Boston Globe, December 10, 2006, Floyd Skloot, "The Man of Masks: A Biography of Polish Writer I.B. Singer, Secretive, Conflicted Interpreter of Jewish Life."

Kirkus Reviews, July 1, 2006, review of Isaac B. Singer, p. 668.

Library Journal, October 1, 2006, Terren Ilana Wein, review of Isaac B. Singer, p. 72.

Los Angeles Times, November 5, 2006, Jeffrey Meyers, "His Devils Made Him Do It."

New York Times, December 24, 2006, D.T. Max, "The Yiddish Master."

Publishers Weekly, June 26, 2006, review of Isaac B. Singer, p. 42.

Wilson Quarterly, autumn, 2006, Aviya Kushner, "A Life in Translation," p. 99.