UK and Irish reviews

‘A quiet tale of a young servant in Victor Hugo’s household; it pierced me to the heart.’ — Marina Warner, TLS Books of the Year 2024

'The extraordinary quality of Axelrad’s writing is the silence that envelops it. There is a featherweight lightness to it all that is a supreme contrast to the heavy mournfulness one feels after reaching the final page. Célina is not a submissive character, and life’s blows, including fears of impending death, glance off her, seemingly without leaving a mark. Nor is she subversive (unlike Célestine in Octave Mirbeau’s The Diary of a Chambermaid, whose employer fetishises her boots and ends up dead with one of the boots stuffed in his mouth). She knows that her social standing limits her freedom and the options open to her, and that it’s not, as one character says, ‘a crime to sleep with a servant’. Nevertheless, within those limitations, she is able to exert her individuality and choose her own lovers, including one disastrous final relationship after she leaves Guernsey. At the end, I could almost believe that Axelrad’s Célina could have had some influence on Hugo’s creative life, perhaps as a prototype of Fantine, one of the most attractive characters in Les Misérables, forced to become a prostitute before she, too, dies from tuberculosis.' -- Mark Bostridge, Spectator

‘Catherine Axelrad's exquisite novella Célina, first published in 1997 (now in a transporting English translation by Philip Terry) is a plain, matter-of-fact and consequently very moving diary of a chambermaid. It carries no salaciousness, but stands for itself […] Axelrad's dispassionate depiction of sullied innocence and forced compromise is brutal and devastating.’ — Catherine Taylor, Irish Times

French reviews

‘What an unsettling of the statue of father Hugo! Refreshing.’ — Élisabeth Lequéret, La vie

‘A tender, melancholic tale where Catherine Axelrad has managed to avoid all pitfalls. Neither the story of the poor servant; nor that of the great discontent; nor that of the lascivious old man handing out two francs – scrupulously accounted for in his notebook – in return for special favours. No – only the true and touching voice of young Célina Henry, perfectly captured and wondrously restored, which the fine phrases overheard at Hauteville House have, if nothing else, helped liberate from those last sorry days.’ – Mona Ozouf, L’Obs 

‘A Victor Hugo whom we do not know, for never had he been presented against this backdrop, nor indeed as part of the banal unfolding of daily life. A discovery, in fact, especially because he is not the book’s main character. This is well and truly the story of Célina Henry, the maid, who discovers – and thereby enables us to discover – a man ultimately like so many others, with his ordinary share of qualities and flaws.’ — Clément Borgal, La République du Centre