Welcome to Litsy!

A perfect novel. I can‘t believe I hadn‘t heard of this important french classic for so long. It was so dreamlike, the images will stay with me forever I think. Very melodramatic but I wouldn‘t have had it any other way.

This story could have been grand, if it weren‘t so cramped. The time frame was just wrong, all this melodrama in the space of months or years - it would have needed DECADES to be justified. The last twenty pages justifies some of it, but that‘s a lot of pages to read just to get there. An annoying book that would never have been published today, but that could make a good 10 episode historical drama.

Saturday morning reading.

#7days#7covers #7covers7days
From #Japan to #France, I want to recommend this Romantic (in the historical and artistical sense) novel. It is very difficult for me to talk about it without feeling that I am spoiling the book, so I just want to put it out there, let you know it exists and hoping you'll pick it up some day.

Oops.... went a bit OTT in the kindle store this morning..... though they are all from my #TBR and I needed possibilities for an up coming 9 hour long haul flight ... (that‘s my excuse anyway!)

I was really enjoying the feel of this book until the last twenty-or-so pages, when Alain-Fournier gathered together the strands he'd carefully laid in the preceding 180 pages and wove a cloth of infinitely finer emotional texture. Despite the revelation of "The Secret" having a certain melodramatic inevitability about it, the intensity of feeling is breathtakingly honest. ????

"By what right do I, who have wasted this day, make claims on tomorrow?"

I had hoped to finish this tonight - 24 pages left - but there's work tomorrow and sleep beckons...

How can a man who has once strayed into Heaven ever hope to make terms with the earth!

"He appeared at our house on a Sunday in November 189...
I still say "our" house though it is no longer ours; nearly fifteen years have passed since we left the neighbourhood, and we shall not be going back to it."
#firstlines

In these two sentences, Alain-Founier strikes the tone of nostalgic reverie that permeates the narrative, while setting up an air of expectancy, of revelations to be made. I think I'm going to enjoy this one.

This book was such an unexpectedly delightful story! I honestly had never heard anything about it but just bought it on a whim. It‘s a coming-of-age story about two boys who are at school together. Yet, it‘s a love story and definitely very French. I really liked this one!

Le Grand Meaulnes. Alain Fournier
Paris Emile-Paul Freres, Editors. 1913. First Original Edition September 1913 shown on page 366 (imprimerie Chaix, rue Bergère, 20, Paris.-15822-9-13), justification of the printing 1,537, typographical error page 133 that indicates chapter I is place of chapter II. Book very scarce, Book in very good condition, rust spots on some pages of the book. #alainfournier #legrandmeaulnes #firstedition #rarebook

I tried reading it but the narrative was boring for me. Couldn't finish it at all. 😴😴😴

This evening, which I have tried to spirit away, is a strange burden to me. While time moves on, while the day will soon end and I already wish it gone, there are men who have entrusted all their hopes to it, all their love and their last efforts. There are dying men or others who are waiting for a debt to come due, who wish that tomorrow would never come...and others who are tired, for whom the night will never be long enough...

My entry for #setinasmalltown is Le Grand Meaulnes (The Lost Estate) by Alain-Fournier and tr. by Laura Carlin. A truly haunting story set in rural France.

#photoadaynov16 #day4 #foliosociety

Un chef- d'œuvre! Découvrez l'amitié entre François Seurel et Augustin Meaulnes, l'amour de ce dernier pour la belle Yvonne de Galais et le monde poétique du domaine perdu... ? #french #litterature #alainfournier #legrandmeaulnes #friendship