Alain-Fournier
Paperback | Pages: 206 pages Rating: 3.75 | 9356 Users | 698 Reviews
Particularize About Books Le Grand Meaulnes
| Title | : | Le Grand Meaulnes |
| Author | : | Alain-Fournier |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | First Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 206 pages |
| Published | : | July 1st 1994 by Penguin Classics (first published 1913) |
| Categories | : | Fiction. Classics. Cultural. France. European Literature. French Literature. Literature. 20th Century |
Narrative In Pursuance Of Books Le Grand Meaulnes
Dear Henri Alain-Fournier,Some people claim you had great talent as a novelist. Many more would claim I don't. Is it fair that you died in World War I while I live, free to write this review and feeling like I'm having a bad morning because I didn't have all the usual ingredients for my breakfast shake? Your remains weren't identified until 1991, true, but do you know that without yogurt, steel cut oatmeal, goji berries and banana congeal like pond scum when blended with almond milk? I guess in a way translated works of fiction are like that, lacking an ingredient. Not really fair of me to judge you then, is it? And on top of that, I read somewhere that the Robin Buss translation I have isn't the best.
I don't know. Maybe I've been prejudiced against anything French because there's been a creepy mime wandering around the farmers' market on Saturdays. With the summer heat, its face make-up starts to melt and peel and it scares my kid and me. Or maybe, having discovered Woody Allen before James Dean, it's because I'm sentimental for my own sort of coming-of-age story. But the truth is, I found your novel sappy. Sappy to the nth degree.
"And that evening, sobbing, he asked Mademoiselle de Galais for her hand in marriage."
Barf.
Some folks describe it as dream-like. Well, I'll meet them halfway and say that it is conducive to a dream-like state, in as much as I found myself wanting to fall asleep as I read it. God! Germany probably invaded France so often to keep from nodding off. Can you blame them? They had all those big philosophical treatises to write, but then kept getting distracted by the latest Twilight prequel. And they would've even read it in the original French because all you Continentals speak five languages!
I tried to make excuses for you, thinking, "Look at it this way: it's a parable for post-colonial France. They were just coming off that Napoleonic high and had to simultaneously deal with the onset of modernity. It's a simple case of British/penis envy." But even my credulity can only stretch so far.
Goodbye, Alain-Fournier. Sorry your life was cut short by one of history's celebrated mistakes. Maybe this book will mean something to somebody else. It's going to have the opportunity, because I'm donating it to my library.
Identify Books In Favor Of Le Grand Meaulnes
| Original Title: | Le Grand Meaulnes |
| ISBN: | 0140182829 (ISBN13: 9780140182828) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Setting: | France |
Rating About Books Le Grand Meaulnes
Ratings: 3.75 From 9356 Users | 698 ReviewsJudgment About Books Le Grand Meaulnes
For the first half of this book, I really was not enjoying it, but the second half I loved, so I would give the first half a 2 and the second 5.THIS BOOK GIVES ME FEELINGS. UGH. *sobs with abandon*
In a boring afternoon of one of these days of June, I chose Le Grand Meaulnes immediately in the local library right after the librarian's alarm that they were closing. It was French and I thought I had a glance on a review before. By reading a few pages of it, I realized that it was a young adult story of two boys François and his best friend Meaulnes who lived in a lower-class school in a village. Narrating in a first person, I thought despite its title there was no trace of Meaulnes himself.
The themes of childhood and wonder, idealized love and adolescent oaths are treated in such a way that one penetrates body and soul in the world of the great Meaulnes: one feels the cold, the smell of school, calm and whispering secrets.For my part, I preferred the first part that takes place at the school in the village of Sainte-Agathe until the narrative of the "strange feast".The rest did not seem necessary and I think I even zapped!As for those who do not like this novel I tell them that
This is the Centenary Edition of the French classic Le Grand Meaulnes, a coming of age story of a boy and the companion he looks up to, nicknamed Le Grand Meaulnes. So we have all the usual boyhood stuff of bullies, juvenile delinquent episodes, boring school days, awkwardness around girls. One day Le Grand Meaulnes, very much the leader, while our narrator is the follower, gets lost and finds himself in an exotic costumed adventure in a fairyland, beautiful girl and all. The story becomes a
Never have I found it more difficult to finish a lovelier book. My first attempt was derailed five years ago; the second was ultimately successful only after a three-month hiatus. And this little volume carried so much weight by now, as a favourite of several people - exes, friends, the hard-to-label - from different times and places in my life ... all of which have something of the partially-lost domain about them.I started reading it again in a sunny May garden surrounded by birdsong - the
Most French people read this book at school and a recent poll in France made it the sixth best book of the 20th century. Unlike the average French person, I came to this story of adolescent love in my early 50s. Would the book's charms work for the older reader? The answer is an emphatic yes. It perfectly captures that magical period when emotions are at their most intense. Le Grand Meaulnes, the protagonist, is an adventurous, charismatic wanderer who stumbles across a lost chateau where
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