Philippe Claudel: The Investigation (2010)

Translation: Daniel Hahn (2013)
Edition: MacLehose (2013)
Review number:1491

Even the very shortest summary of The Investigation makes the main feature of the novel immediately apparent. The Investigator is sent to look into a series of suicides at the Firm, and has a series of strange experiences in the Town. This immediately shows that virtually nothing in the book is named directly, everything being given a role in a way which makes the novel seem to be full of symbols (these substitutes where names are normally used are always capitalised). The symbolic side of the novel is so apparent that it is noticed by the characters (in a none-too-original ironic touch); the Investigator and the Policeman discuss whether they might be in a novel about three quarters of the way through.

The important exception to the lack of proper names is the hotel in which the Investigator stays, Hope Hotel, and this actually makes the symbolic nature of the book seem even clearer: it is a bizarre place, and every time the Investigator's hopes rise that he might actually have a decent room and breakfast, they are doomed to strange disappointments: bathrooms where all the taps dispense boiling water, breakfasts where everyone else is served lavishly while he is given just two rusks. If The Investigation has any message it is this: that life is confusing, surreal, and doomed to disappointment.

What the reader thinks of the novel will almost certainly be determined by what they think of this defining foible. For me, it was interesting to begin with, but quickly became irritating. Although a short novel by modern standards, The Investigation felt over long and extended; perhaps the natural length for literature which is so dependent on a quirky structural idea is the short story.

Most reviews I have seen of The Investigation  emphasise how much it is like Kafka. This is true, in its portrayal of an innocent individual caught up in amysterious, bureaucratic nightmare. Claudel also brings in absurd and humorous elements, and the overall tone is much lighter. It's a black comedy, not a nightmare at all. Much of the humour is about the mishaps of the Investigator, and that has a cruel side to it which I personally don't find amusing.

My rating: 4/10.

Fred Vargas: The Three Evangelists (1995)

Translation: Siân Reynolds, 2006
Edition: Vintage, 2007

Fred Vargas' only standalone novel so far is an intriguingly different detective story. This is clear from the bizarre opening, in which retired opera singer Sophia Siméonidis wakes one morning to find a new tree has been planted in her garden overnight. After worrying in silence for a month, she approaches her next door neighbours, three effectively unemployed historians (known as the Evangelists because their names are Matthias, Marc and Lucien) and a senior policeman forced into disgraced retirement. She asks them to pose as council workers and dig up the tree, once they suggest that it would be a good way for someone to hide a body.

When nothing is found, it seems as though the whole thing was just a fuss over nothing, until Sophia goes missing. Then the Evangelists begin looking into the mystery in earnest, feeling that their research skills and the fact that they are not policemen might make it possible to discover things that the official investigation cannot. While this latter reason is commonly used in crime fiction to justify amateur investigations, it is not one that would be recommended by police forces around the world!

The Three Evangelists is a character led detective story, with quirky touches like the tree lending extra interest. (I have been told that this sort of whimsy is typical of Vargas, and that to some it might become tiresome after two or three novels.) It has a brilliantly put together ending, where the pace suddenly picks up for the last few chapters and the solution is revealed.

Vargas has now won three of the last four International Crime Daggers, despite other writers translated into English having a higher profile. The Three Evangelists was the first of her winners, and clearly deserved to do so. This is not just a well written detective story, it is different from the usual run of things in the genre and so stands out all the more. I would rate it at 8/10.

Alain-Fournier: Le Grand Meaulnes (1913)

Translation: Frank Davison, 1959
Edition: Penguin, 1966
Review number: 1120

Catcher in the Rye has been an important novel in the lives of many of its readers, helping to re-define ideas of what teenagers are like in the English-speaking world. To a French person a generation or so earlier, Le Grand Meaulnes, which is also about growing up, might well have had a similar effect. A further similarity between Alain-Fournier and J.D. Salinger is that the one novel amounts to virtually their entire output, though in the case of the French author this was because of his tragic early death on the Western Front rather than the reclusiveness of Salinger's later years.

The narrator of the novel is Francois Seurel, the son of a schoolmaster. He is approaching the end of his education when a new pupil arrives at the school. Augustin Meaulnes quickly becomes the leader of the boys in their wildest escapades in the countryside around the school. On one of these adventures Meaulnes becomes lost and ends up at a ruined country estate which is being prepared for a bizarre wedding. (This is why a filmed version of the novel was entitled The Lost Domain.) There he meets a young woman and falls in love, but once he returns to the outside world he is unable to find the chateau again, even though he becomes obsessed with the search.

There are three things which mark Le Grand Meaulnes out as a classic. The first is its evocation of childhood, particularly the magical nature of some of our experience in that period which often produces nostalgic feelings in later life. The second is in the symbolic nature of the domain itself, which is really the same thing: it stands for that which is left behind on entering adulthood, something which we can never find again no matter how hard we search. The third reason, also connected, is the relationship between Seurel and Meaulnes. This is one of idealistic hero worship on Seurel's part; there aren't quite homoerotic overtones, but it comes close (and of couse, as narrator, Seurel would be able to censor the story as he chooses). It is something typical of adolescence; though one would usually expect one of them to be younger than the other, here Seurel is given a slight infirmity which makes his hero worship of a contemporary more credible.

Le Grand Meaulnes has rather suffered for non-French readers for two reasons. Alain Fournier's untimely death meant that he didn't generate the international reputation during his lifetime that he might well have done; it is easy enough to believe that he might have produced work equalling the front rank of twentieth century French novelists. The other problem is that two key phrases are difficult (if not impossible) to translate. One is crucially the title, because "grand" is being used to carry far more than its dictionary translations, "big" or "great". The choice made here is to keep the French title (also marred for English speakers because the character's name is nearly phonetically equivalent to "moan"); this can only be off-putting. Other titles which have been used are The Wanderer, which is rather vague, and The Lost Domain, which introduces the other untranslatable phrase. This is "domain", used of the run down chateau and (crucially) the world it evokes in itself and as a symbol. The problem is again the baggage which goes with the word; the literal equivalent "country estate" has different connotations in English. For Alain-Fournier, it also designates an unreal world beside our own, like that Faerie of George MacDonald. In this domain the normal rules do not quite apply; once experienced, it is never forgotten, remaining an influence for ever. This is what Alain-Fournier has to say about childhood, and he uses the domain as a symbol to do so.

Salinger provided Holden Caulfield with a mission - to proclaim that adults are not always right, that teacher does not always know best. Alain-Fournier's characters are gentler, less iconoclastic. Even though they do things against the wishes of adults, the novel is from a world long before the kind of cynical teenage rebellion documented by Salinger. Since Salinger's picture of the teenager has gone on to become so dominant in modern culture, Le Grand Meaulnes has something of the air of a period piece. Yet as an evocation of the magic of adolescence, it remains an unsurpassed classic.

Jules Verne: Round the World in Eighty Days (1872)

Edition: Heron
Review number: 1073

Of the handful of Verne novels which are still popular today, this is the only one which is a pure adventure story, with no science fiction. Its basis is one of the most famous bets in fiction: a discussion in London's Reform Club prompted by a newspaper story that the completion of trans-Indian railway links now makes it possible to travel around the world in only eighty days by scheduled rail and steamer leads Phileas Fogg to bet that he can do this.

Of course, if the novel just consisted of reading timetables and sitting around on trains and boats, it would be a very dull adventure. So things are not as easy as this; it turns out that the railway in India isn't quite complete; the clownish antics of Fogg's servant Passepartout cause delay; and, believing that Fogg fits the description of a bank robber and that the bet is cover for flight a detective keeps on trying to delay him until an arrest warrant catches up.

It is really the race against time which has ensured the survival of the novel. In these days of rapid air travel, it has something of a romantic period quality, particularly since the decline of railway and sea travel would make it at least as difficult to follow Fogg's itinerary today.

Émile Zola: Nana (1880)

Translation: George Holden, 1972
Edition: Penguin, 1975
Review number: 1065

Because of its film versions (which are considerably toned down) and its controversial subject matter, Nana is Zola's best known novel. One of his series Les Rougon-Macquart, which together amounts to a study of heredity, Nana is the story of a prostitute in Paris just before the Franco-Prussian War of 1870.

The portrait painted of this part of Parisian society is neither cheerful nor romanticised (as it was, for example, in Dumas' Dame aux Cammelias about thirty years earlier). Nana herself, who was a child character in L'Assommoir, has nothing going for her except beauty; she is stupid, vulgar, greedy, vain and capricious, a product of the worst slums of the city. She at least has the excuse that she is the inevitable result of her background, but the remainder of Zola's characters are no more pleasant. The members of high society are hedonistic hypocrites who are rushing headlong to their downfall (the Prussian invasion being given a moral dimension by the author). In the meantime, they are oblivious to the suffering they cause and to the mental and physical consequences of their actions, not to mention the degrading nature of the pleasures they seek. (Even though venereal diseases are not mentioned, their corruption is indirectly part of the novel, particularly towards the end.) Even the church is involved (in a depiction controversial at the time), waiting to garner those crumbs not wasted, rushing Nana's lover Count Muffat off the moment he repents and shows signs of wanting to return to the fold.

Zola's writing was extremely shocking in its day, with its strong emphasis on the unpleasant and unglamourous side of life; parts of Nana are still not an enjoyable read and it is unrelentingly bleak. The underbelly of nineteenth century life was a theme for several of its authors, notably Dickens in English, but Zola differs from the others in at least two ways. As I have already implied, his self-publicised emphasis on "realism" basically meant that the details of life over which a veil had previously been drawn now became the centre of attention. He is much more uninhibited than earlier authors. (His claim that his writing is more realistic is actually not quite true.) The other difference is that writers like Dickens and Gaskell were trying to change things; they wrote to campaign. Zola exaggerated society's ills for other reasons, for an artistic purpose, for the fascination of the exercise. (This is one reason why the novels are set a decades or so in the past rather than in the present favoured by the English writers mentioned above.)

Jules Verne: Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1864)

Edition: Heron
Review number: 1062

Not only was this the first Jules Verne novel I ever read, it was probably also the first adult science fiction. Like many of his novels, its title directly describes its contents: it tells of a journey of exploration into the mouth of an extinct volcano. In style it is clearly based on Victorian tales of adventure set in the normal world, where explorers in darkest Africa would be facing danger in the jungle. It is very like The Lost World; these two novels may well be among the most Victorian in terms of thought-world of all.

Verne's geology has been quite comprehensively outdated since Journey to the Centre of the Earth was published, but that is, by this time, one of the charms of the novel. Here we have an Earth with a cool centre containing sedimentary rock, open caverns large enough to contain considerable seas filled with living fossils (in an ecosystem without access to sunlight), and so on. Verne was writing long before ideas such as plate tectonics, but he wasn't even reflecting the most up to date ideas of his own day; most geologists believed that the temperature steadily rose through to the centre of the planet (even without convincing descriptions of the processes that might make this possible), and the relative cold beneath a volcanic zone is hailed as a vindication of the ideas of Humphrey Davy. The idea continued to be used for many years even as its scientific plausibility faded - Edgar Rice Burroughs' Pellucidar stories depended on it.

Verne's novels are not really meant to be about scientific accuracy; they are meant to be speculations in the form of exciting adventures, and Journey to the Centre of the Earth is certainly that.

Jean Anouilh: Antigone (1942)

Translation: Lewis Golantiere, 1951 (Buy from Amazon)
Edition: Methuen, 1957
Review number: 1036

Anouilh has taken over the plot of the play directly from Sophocles, while changing the characterisation of Antigone and her uncle Creon to make a point very clear (though presumably not to the German authorities) when originally produced in occupied Paris. His play is not about Antigone's choice but about the futility of resistance and the moral bankruptcy of both resistance and collaboration (the Germans being symbolised by Creon).

The story is basically that Creon has taken over as ruler of Thebes after the self-mutilation and exile of Oedipus; the former king's children grow up under his protection. The two sons, Polynices and Eteocles, eventually kill each other when the former leads a rebellious attack on the city. Creon therefore orders a hero's funeral for Eteocles, but Polynices is left in the open to rot, the death penalty being prescribed for anyone who tries to carry out the burial rites for him. Of his sisters, Ismene is unhappy but not willing to do anything, but Antigone is caught trying to bury the body. Creon tries to spare her, asking her to collaborate with him in covering up her crime, but she refuses and eventually her execution is ordered.

Where Anouilh principally differs from Sophocles is in the motivation of the characters. Antigone begins to defend her actions by claiming that piety is her motivation, but this is quickly demolished - she is known to find religious observance ridiculous, so how can her claim be anything but hypocrisy? Creon claims, in his turn, that he wants the best for Thebes, but he view the best as the preservation of the staus quo, especially when he can claim that he is driven by necessity to such acts as the desecration of Polynices' corpse.

There is an air of unreality about this play, partly because it has been modernised (so that Polynices was a wild young man who liked fast cars, for example), but mainly because Anouilh has changed the function of the chorus. In a Greek play, they tend to expand on the action, reacting in a way that helps explain what is going on or bring out the point the playwright wants to make. Here, Anouilh uses a single man, who is much more separated from the action, acting as a narrator, and constantly pointing out the artificial nature of the theatrical drama. The effect is alienating, and the intention is clearly to make the audience think about the message of the play rather than the events in the drama itself, to distance themselves from their immediate emotional reaction.

In many ways, the meaning of Antigone is bound up with the circumstances for which it was written, more so than is the case for most drama. (Indeed, this is so clearly the case that it must have been quite daring to put on, critical as it is of both occupiers and resistance.) It still has something to say, though, and that is basically that there is something banal about our motives even for important actions; not a cheerful message, but one to provoke some self-examination.

Jean Anouilh: Becket (1961)

Translation: Lucienne Hill, 1961 (Buy from Amazon)
Edition: Eyre Methuen, 1963
Review number: 1029

The relationship between Henry II and Backet is a fascinating one, particularly with the way that it changed once Becket was ordained and became Archbishop of Canterbury. Though more accessible, Anouilh's version of the story is probably less well known in English than Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral. It consists of a series of scenes from the lives of the two men, which are bookended by Henry, naked before the cathedral altar performing penance for Becket's death.

Anouilh isn't particularly interested in historical accuracy, and there are a number of errors, such as Henry referring to his father as a king. More seriously, since it plays an important part in the play, is making Becket's background Saxon rather than Norman. (One of the themes which interests Anouilh is the relationship between conquerors and conquered.)

Henry is presented more sympathetically than Becket, who is made clever but cold, obsessed with the idea of honour (not his own, but first the King's and then God's, and meaning not something chivalric but the preservation and extension of their rights). Henry, on the other hand, is passionate and entranced by the man who has shown him that there is more to life than the interests of his bestial barons: food and drink, fighting and sex. The combination of their characters - which does bear some relation to the medieval sources even if these were unlikely to think in such terms - was inevitably to prove explosive once Becket transferred his loyalty to the church.

This change of heart, the big mystery about Becket's life story, is still really left unexplained by Anouilh, though he clearly connects it to the oaths sworn on ordination. It is Henry who is the memorable and convincing character of the two even if Becket is the nominal centre of the play.

Jean Anouilh: Colombe (1951)

Translation: Dennis Cannan, 1951
Edition: Methuen, 1959 (Buy from Amazon)
Review number: 1004

Like Ardèle, which accompanies it in this Methuen volume, Columbe is about the right to freedom of expression. The young woman in the title role seems content to be the wife of aspiring and penniless musician Jean, until his call-up papers arrive. Then they are forced to ask his estranged mother, a famous actress, for help, which she gives them by providing Colombe with a part in the production in which she is starring.

This act, and the absence of her husband, brings Colombe into contact with a completely different world, full of men paying her compliments, full of expensive gifts and, above all, full of fun. Is this more important than dutiful devotion to her husband, his art, and their baby (which she seems quite grateful to be able to afford to pass on to a childminder)? Her new life also includes Jean's half-brother Paul, who is the opposite of Jean and to whom she is strongly attracted.

Colombe is remarkable for the way in which the character of the mother is drawn so quickly and skilfully, even though like the others (in what is after all quite a short play) she contains liberal amounts of stereotype. It is not among Anouilh's more profound plays, but is no doubt extremely effective on stage.

Jean Anouilh: Ardèle (1948)

Translation: Lucienne Hill, 1950 (original title Ardèle ou la Marguerite)
Edition: Methuen, 1959 (Buy from Amazon)
Review number: 1002

Ardèle is a tragic idea written in the form of a slightly absurdist French bedroom farce. Its central character is never seen or heard on the stage, which is another unusual feature. It is set in a château where a family conference has been called to discuss what can be done about Ardèle, the old maid of the family. A hunchback from her youth, she scandalises her relations when she and the new tutor, also a hunchback, fall in love.

This is an entirely hypocritical reaction, as every other family member is openly having an affair. (The exception is the General's wife, who never emerges from her room and whose periodic calling for her husband is dismissed as insanity.) Knowing that her future is under discussion, Ardèle has locked herself in her room and refuses to come out, despite the arguments made through the keyhole of her door.

The meaning with the play is connected to the right to have personal freedom, to love and be ones true self. Ardèle shocks the other characters not because of the social distance between her and the tutor, but because they have never considered her a fit person to love or be loved. Ardèle's passion is clearly far more deeply felt than the bedroom-shuffling antics of the rest of the family, and even evoked only through the words of the others she comes across the better deserving of the freedom to love.

Stendhal: The Pink and the Green (1830/1837)

Translation:Richard Howard, 1988
Edition: Hamish Hamilton, 1988 (Buy from Amazon)
Review number: 964

Stendhal worked twice on the story of Mina (de) Wangel, writing first a completed, but put away and unpublished, short story, and then, seven years later, beginning a novel (by which time the aristocratic "de" was lost). Both are presented here, in reverse chronological order, just as they were first published in French.

The plot is one which is typical of romantic novels from earlier in the nineteenth century, with Mina, a rich German heiress, despairing of ever finding a suitor who is not after her money, coming to Paris where no one knows her. In the short story, she even pretends to be her own sacked maid. The scenario enables Stendhal to make lots of digs at the hypocrisy of French society (a constant sarcastic refrain in the German scenes is "of course, nothing like this has ever happened in France").

Each version of the story is amusing, but the initial chapters of the novel are much better written, the extra space making it possible for Stendhal to improve the characterisation of Mina greatly.

Eugène Ionesco: The Lesson (1954)

Translation: Donald Watson, 1958
Edition: Penguin, 1962
Review number: 960

This is the only Ionesco play I have seen, and it is very funny on the stage. It describes a visit by a pupil to the house of someone who can only be described as a mad professor, who teaches her bizarre mathematics and ludicrous linguistics before attacking her with a knife.

The mathematical jokes are similar to those involving the Logician in Rhinoceros, and The Lesson reads like a preparatory excercise for the later play, a less surreal version of that play's lighter moments.

The Lesson is lighter than the other plays in this collection, and so unlike them it doesn't particularly seem to need to be supplied with a meaning.

Eugène Ionesco: The Chairs (1954)

Translation: Donald Watson, 1958
Edition: Penguin, 1962
Review number: 959

Two old people prepare an auditorium for a lecture. They welcome large numbers of invisible guests, holding conversations with several of them including the Emperor. Then, when the lecturer arrives, he turns out to be deaf and dumb, unable to communicate except by sign language and gibberish written on a blackboard.

The conversations between the old man and woman and their imaginary guests are reminiscent of Beckett. It has the world weariness, even if the wordplay is missing. It is not particularly funny on the page, unlike Rhinoceros and The Lesson, but could come alive on the stage.

As with Ionesco's other plays, the question is whether it is meaningful or not, and, if it is, what that meaning is. There are several possibilities for the play's theme, if it has one, and the key element is what Ionesco wants to convey with the invisible characters. They are not likely to be imaginary, only present of the minds of the two old people, because the lecturer appears and the fantasy would have to be consistently shared by both of them. The implication is that any meaning the play has is to do with the audience's perception of these people, or possibly about their nature as characters in the play.

Eugène Ionesco: Rhinoceros (1959)

Translation: Derek Prowse, 1960
Edition: Penguin, 1962
Review number: 956

Ionesco's most famous play may have a surreal idea at its centre (that people are turning into rhinoceroses), but he uses this to say something about human nature while at the same time creating a drama which is by turns funny, surprising, and fascinating.

In the first act, the main characters, Berenger and his friend Jean, are terrorised by the first rhinoceroses, running around the streets of the town causing lots of damage. It is only in the next scene, set in Berenger's office, that we discover that people are turning into the animals, as one of his colleagues destroys the building's staircase. Then everyone around Berenger starts to change - Jean, his colleagues and eventually the girl from his office that he had a crush on at a point when they believe they are the only remaining human beings. Finally, Berenger, alone, wonders why he can't change, begins to feel that his lack of a horn on his forehead makes him ugly, but ends with defiance against the idea of changing.

Though the play is designed to make the audience think it has an ideological point, like one of Sartre's existentialist plays, for example, it doesn't really, in my opinion. The rhinoceroses can be interpreted, say, as people who have accepted a new totalitarian regime, but this identification can only be made vaguely, and it seems to be more that Ionesco is writing an absurdist version of this kind of drama, so that the animals do not need to have a meaning.

Stendhal: Lucien Leuwen (1894)

Translation: H.L.R. Edwards, 1951
Edition: Penguin, 1991
Review number: 877

Stendhal's famous novels, Scarlet and Black and The Charterhouse of Parma, are accompanied by a set of uncompleted projects, of which Lucien Leuwen is the longest and most complete. Two parts were written, requiring only final editing, and a third was projected before the likelihood that the French censor would ban publication led Stendhal to abandon the project.

What is different about Lucien Leuwen that would have made the censor sit up and take notice? Like Scarlet and Black, its setting is contemporary, but it is extremely critical of the regime and of the narrow minded pettiness which characterised French politics of the period (the 1830s). Real ministers can be identified from Stendhal's descriptions. Every so often, Stendhal even felt that he had to put in little footnotes to remind the censor that the expressed views of the characters do not necessarily match the opinions of the author, even though to be both a radical and a conservative would have been quite difficult.

The hero of the novel is an ardent young man, similar in many ways to Julien in Scarlet and Black. The first part, which was more comprehensively revised by Beyle and published before the second under the title The Green Huntsman, is set in the provincial town of Nancy, where he is posted as a second lieutenant in the cavalry regiment quartered there. His background, which is wealthy but not noble, separates him from his fellow officers and from the town's society. Although, as a sophisticated Parisian, he is contemptuous of the society, both the nobility and the bourgeois, he works to become part of it when he falls in love. His feeling that the stupidity of these people would stop them from being successful in the capital is shown to be wrong in the second part. Here, Lucien deserts his post because of the unhappiness of his love affair, but the influence of his father secures him a post in a ministry.

The whole novel is an attack on the pettiness of the French bourgeoisie, the elevation of mediocrity and the cult of the "dead centre" which would perhaps be equivalent to an exaggerated version of the question often posed in parodies of the British Civil Service - "Is he sound?". In its incomplete state, there is clearly polishing that would have remained to be done, and a certain amount of tightening - Beyle wrote it with the idea that he would put more in than he needed and then cut it; but it remains a savage indictment of 1830s French life.

Émile Zola: L'Assommoir (1876)

Translation: Leonard Tancock, 1970
Edition:  Penguin, 1970
Review number: 680

Zola's novel caused such a commotion and was considered so immoral that its original serial publication was halted. Over the next century, it has proved sufficiently influential that the reason for this is to a large extent hidden, particularly in translation. Zola's story treats of the Parisian slums, and it is written in the language which would have been used by the characters, not in the equivalent of the exaggerated, cleaned up Cockney used by English writers but one which used the vocabulary of the streets. To use swearing and slang in literary fiction is not now something shocking, but in the 1870s it was totally unheard of to use such words in print.

It is not just the language used in L'Assommoir which was considered shocking. There is a fair amount of sex in the novel, both inside and outside marriage, for one thing; and the whole story is the tale of a woman's gradual degredation through laziness and drink. (The title is a slang term for a shop which sells alcohol.) Gervaise is basically the principal agent of her own destruction; she is not the virtuous saint so often portrayed in novels about working class life from this period - there is no way that she has a strong enough character to rise above her circumstances. (There is one character who is a bit like this in L'Assommoir, a child who is bringing up two younger sisters despite the beatings and starvation imposed on her by her alcoholic father, and typically she does not receive any reward except an early death.) Gervaise is a more realistic character, and her background is also more realistic. It is not the evil capitalist who grinds down the workers and makes their situation impossible. Characters around Gervaise are relatively comfortable, and even she is well enough off at one point to rent a shop. The character who most nearly approximates the grasping capitalist is one of Gervaise's landlords, and he makes a point of his own poor origins.

The two great virtues of L'Assommoir are its rejection of stereotypes and Zola's vivid writing, which even comes through in translation. It is easy to see why it has had such a strong influence. It is a depressing and uncomfortable read, however, and so is the sort of novel one is pleased to have read but would probably not pick up again for a long time.

Choderlos de Laclos: Les Liaisons Dangereuses (1782)

Translation: P.W.K. Stone, 1961
Edition: Penguin, 1961
Review number: 499

Long one of the most notorious of all French novels, Les Liaisons Dangereuses seems to have exerted quite a fascination in recent years, with three film versions (the updated Cruel Intentions, Valmont and Dangerous Liaisons). The idea of cynical manipulation at the heart of the novel perhaps resonates with Westerners in this age of distrusted mass media, making the interest of Hollywood studios somewhat ironic.

The plot of Les Liaisons Dangereuses is simple. The Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont are debauched late eighteenth century French aristocrats, and for their amusement Valmont seeks to corrupt the virtuous and devout Presidente de Tourvel (her title derived from her husband's appointment in French provincial government).

The reason that the book was considered immoral is because it was felt that the bad are insufficiently punished (less was said about the good going unrewarded) and that the avowed intent of the author (to teach others to avoid the snares set by those like Merteuil and Valmont) is really a joke. Neither of these criticisms are likely to pose much of a barrier to the modern reader, and the brittle cynicism of many of the letters (it is an extremely well constructed epistolary novel) is more likely to sadden than to shock.

Of all the well known epistolary novels, Les Liaisons Dangereuses is probably the one which pays most attention to the ways in which real people actually write. The temptation when writing in this form is to get carried away by the story, and write letters which are far too long or too concentrated on one subject, that which advances the plot. The letters here are of a variety of lenghs, none too long to be written in a hour or so, and touch on other subjects (though all are relevant to the main plot).

The translation is eminently readable and enjoyable.

Molière: The Learned Ladies (1672)

Translation: A.R. Waller (1907); updated by Steven Pimlott & Colin Chambers (1996)
Edition: Nick Hern, 1996
Review number: 493

Molière's last but one play is not among his best known and is perhaps unlikely to become so given its subject (the absurdity of women pretending to philosophical knowledge - though it could easily be present as an attack on those in general who pretend to be learned). As the type of knowledge which is associated with intelligence has also changed (from Greek and Latin to science), it may also seem to a modern audience to attack its target rather obliquely. (Mind you, it would be easy to write a modern version of this play using the kind of rubbish people often talk about science.)

Another reason why this play is less well known is that in many ways it is very similar to the harder hitting Tartuffe: both plays are about hypocrites whom one parent wants to force a daughter to marry rather than the eminently suitable young man that she loves. The hypocrisy is of a different kind, pretending to excellence as a poet rather than religious piety (and the poetry he produces is a parody of some by Molière's enemy Abbé Coth). The Learned Ladies is in parts very funny, and has some interesting characters. (I liked the elder daughter Armande, who rejected her lover for the pure life of philosophy only to become piqued with jealousy when he transfers his attentions to her sister.)

The translation is excellent, written in accordance with a theory that the best way to achieve a similar feel to the original's for a native speaker is to make the translation an imitation of a similar writer in the new language. In this case, Waller chose Sheridan as the model, and has produced an excellent version in his style. The updating has removed any old fashioned phrases (I noticed none); my only quibble is that I don't think that Sheridan is all that like Molière. In particular, I feel that the commedia tradition was far more important to and present in the work of the French author.

Romain Gary: The Dance of Genghis Cohn (1969)

Translation: By the author
Edition: Jonathan Cape, 1969
Review number: 402

Romain Gary's novel of the Holocaust is like no other. Instead of directly portraying the suffering of the Jews, it looks at the effect it had on those who carried out the tortures, the massacres. Depending on how you look at it, the novel has either one or two major characters, and both they and those around them are symbolic of other things. Police Commissioner Schatz of the small German town of Licht has a shameful secret in his past, shared with hundreds of other Germans of his generation: during the war, he was a sergeant in the SS, and ordered the massacre of Jews. But now he is haunted by the ghost of one of the men whose death he ordered, a comedian who had the stage name Genghis Cohn. A constant reminder of his guilt, Cohn has driven Schatz to the point of secretly keeping Jewish festivals and eating kosher food. At the moment, he is also under severe stress because a mass murderer is at large: over twenty men have been discovered in the forest of Geist around Licht, with no trousers on and expressions of ecstasy: they have been loved to death.

Gary is looking at how, towards the end of the sixties, the Holocaust began to be forgotten as new injustices took its place in the public consciousness: the civil rights movement in the US, the Vietnamese villagers massacred by American soldiers. Jews are no longer the victims they have been throughout history. They are even being invited to accept brotherhood with those who once persecuted them (and Gary quotes the Pope and Charles de Gaulle to show that this was really happening). Cohn is suspicious of this offer, for he realises that this means sharing the guilt of the oppressors.

This is the serious side of the novel, which is also hilariously funny, with a very black style of humour. A comedian in the Warsaw ghetto can hardly have been a "feel good" act, and Cohn's ghost continues to make the reader uneasy even when laughing at his wisecracks.

Marcel Proust: Time Regained (1927)

Translation: C.K. Scott Moncrieff & Terence Kilmartin, 1981
Edition: Penguin, 1981
Review number: 349

The final volume of Proust's Remembrance of Things Past has as its themes ageing, illness and death; an appropriate (if gloomy) way to bring to an end his narrator's exploration of his life. Like other volumes published after Proust's death, Time Regained shows signs of a missing final revision, chiefly in minor inconsistencies; but it is an amazing achievement for all that, containing some immensely powerful writing.

The events of Time Regained - and events is perhaps rather too strong a word - take place some time following those of Albertine Disparu. After the First World War, the narrator's health, delicate since he was a child, fails, and he spends years a recluse in a sanatorium. (The precise nature of his illness is not specified.) Following a recovery, he returns to Paris, and attends a fashionable society party. This party - after a lengthy piece of introspective philosophy - is described in one of the most powerful pieces of prose in the entire series of novels. It at first seems to the narrator that he has stumbled in a bizarre fancy dress event in which everyone is to come as an old man or woman; but gradually he realises that their appearance is due to their real ageing, compared with his memory of them from twenty years previously.

In fact, the untrustworthiness and impermanence of memory is one of the ways in which the themes of this last novel are linked to Proust's central concerns of perception and memory. As well as containing people he once knew well but now hardly recognised by the narrator, their relationships have changed and new people have arrived on the scene. Important but now dead people are hardly remembered; on the assumption that things have always been as they are now, the past is adapted to fit the present.

All this means that Remembrance of Things Past ends on a sombre note; but it has chronicled the whole life of the narrator, and life ends with death.