Anne Wiazemsky was an actress and starred in films made by the new wave film makers in France during the 1960-70's. She was married for a time to Jean-Luc Goddard and appeared in several of his films: Week-end, Le Chinoise, Sympathy for the Devil. She also worked with Robert Bresson, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Jean Aurel. She started writing novels in 1989 and won several literary prizes. There were autobiographies and children books as well; she died in 2017. Une poignée de gens ( A handful of people) was published in 1998; there has not been an English translation. It won Le Grand prix de L'Academie française et le Prix Renaudot des lycéens.

Anne Wiazemsky uses her ancestral Russian background (her father was a member of the nobility and emigrated to france in 1917) to write her novel which tells the story of a member of the Russian nobility's, attempts to adapt to life during the early years of the revolution. Marie Belgorodsky is french, but of Russian extraction and is 40 years old. Out of the blue she receives a letter from a Russian man a distant cousin who says he has photographs and a diary of the family in Russia. The diary belonged to Wladimir Belgorodsky who was assassinated in 1917. She agrees to meet Vassiliev the distant cousin out of curiosity, because she has no real desire to research her family history. However at the meeting she is charmed by the elderly Vassiliev and becomes interested in the diary and photographs. The major part of the novel is the story that has been pieced together by Vassiliev told from the point of view of Nathalie Belgorodsky who at the time (1917) was a very young woman betrothed to prince Belgorodsky. Vassiliev is an historian and was a friend of Nathalie before her death in the United Sates.

The book tells the story of how the young Nathalie soon settled into the life of the nobility, won the love of her husband the prince and was instrumental in the decisions taken during the time of the revolution. The prince and his family owned a large estate and the rumour of the land reforms and then the actual regulations pitted the family against the local population and their own large work force. The prince although well liked by his family and workers was soon overwhelmed by the disruption caused by the revolution. Violence was inevitable and the book builds towards the eventual assassination of the prince and the dissolution of the family. In a small final section of the book Marie travels to Russia with Vassilev to search for remains of the ancestral manor house.

Anne Wiazemsky uses extracts from the prince's diary as a way of moving the story along and this works well. The comfortable family life in the weeks before the revolution is well described as is the difficulties the family have in adapting to a new situation. There are of course tensions in the family and this being a french novel there is much concern over the cellar containing expensive bottles of vintage french wine. Perhaps the loss of this is almost as big a tragedy as the assassination of the prince. The novel flows along well and although we know the bare bones of the story from almost the first page, it still held my interest. An easy and entertaining read and so 3 stars. ( )

"Une poignée de gens" d'Anne Wiazemsky (épouse de Jean-Luc Godard et petite-fille de Francois Mauriac) raconte de manière simple et sensible les derniers mois du prince Belgorodsky, victime de la révolution russe: une vie luxueuse, un mariage d'amour suivis de la guerre, des deuils, des exactions. Un mort, parmi tant d'autre, qui revit par la recherche archivistique d'une de ses descendantes. ( )

Marie Belgorodsky, una francesa de 40 años, recibe en 1994 una carta de un familiar lejano del cual ignoraba casi la existencia. En la carta se habla de un “Libro de los destinos”, un diario que mantenía un tal Adichka en 1916 y 1917, cuando la hacienda familiar en Rusia estaba a punto de caer víctima del pillaje y la destrucción, pero cuando aún estaba vigente la Rusia blanca de la nostalgia, la elegancia y la belleza. ( )

L'histoire de Marie, une Parisienne qui retourne à Baïgora et ses fantômes. Une visite dans son passée et la découverte des êtres de souffrance sous un extérieur léger. ( )