Henri Alain-Fournier (1886–1914)

A dreamy, episodic novel about adolescence, nostalgia, dreams, and loss. What stood out to me the most was its incredibly vivid sense of place. Right from the first page, I could feel the shabby, cold house in the French countryside consolidate around me. I could hear the boards creak when they were walked on, and see the specks and flaws in the very windowpanes. Further afield, I could feel the bleakness of the landscape in a bare winter; the fields of yellow-grey, the sparse trees. That show more was the best part.

The unfolding of the story, although more straightforward than many a French novel of my experience, is nevertheless episodic and slightly unconnected - but it is written in the voice of a narrator who is recalling the vividness of his adolescence as something long ago, so the style works quite well. The story is about an adolescent boy who stumbles upon a kind of random dreamlike fête in the middle of nowhere, joins in, and falls in love with a beautiful girl. Afterwards he cannot find the place, nor the girl, tells his friend the narrator about it, and together they build up an enormous, overwhelming dreamworld, a consuming desire to find what was lost. No surprises then, that all does not end happily - but to me it was more melancholy than tragic.

The French title, Le Grand Meaulnes, refers to the character Augustin Meaulnes, who is the one who finds the fête and drives everything that happens afterwards. The narrator, a younger boy, is drawn into it willy-nilly, as it were. What I failed to understand is what’s so grand about Meaulnes. From the moment we are first introduced to him, he is more odd than attractive. He is obsessive, secretive, irritable. He does impulsive selfish things (especially late in the book) which he has the grace to regret afterwards when it’s too late. Don’t get me wrong, I like reading about flawed characters - but I can’t understand why everyone in the book is so drawn to him, why he is such a magnet, why our narrator is so absorbed by him and why unfortunate women suffer because of him. Everything revolves around this young man, and I can’t for the life of me see why.

No one seems able to mention this book without also mentioning that its author died early in WW1 as a soldier - a kind of French Rupert Brooke. (Apparently I can’t either!) I’m tempted to wonder if the author’s early promise and untimely death adds to the fame of this book, since apparently this is required reading for almost every French school child to this day. show less

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.

The tone of adolescent gaucheness is entirely in keeping with both the characters and the author, and what could have show more been an early example of a YA potboiler is raised to the level of genuine literature. The first section of Meaulnes at the wedding fête had a surrealistic air, the middle section a kind of fevered languor, the final section melancholic tragedy, all of it overlaid with a shimmering golden light. Instantly a favourite! show less

I knew nothing about Alain-Fournier when Eva van Outryve de Crommelynck strongly recommended to read this book. A feeble complaint that the book was in French was dismissed on the basis that all books should be read in their original languages. While this presents a formidable obstacle to an aspiring reader, specifically for this book she was quite right.

Finally, I braved Le Grand Meaulnes in French assisted by a fabulous reading of the novel by William Mesguich and I was not disappointed. show more The writing was inspired, almost transcending into poetry at times, the music of the words adding palpably to the emotions overwhelming the children in the story.

The book is a Bildungsroman of a kind but its unique attribute is the feeling of loss accompanying the graduation into adulthood. Some intangible property of childhood, some magical feature of life is forever lost when one regrettably grows up. The wonderous celebration, 'la fete étrange' once witnessed, can never be relived, can never be returned. One can look to substitute this wonder with love or with friendship but 'la fete étrange' of the childhood is no more.

Not all aspects of the story will be appreciated by contemporary readers. Perched on an ivory tower of our present knowledge and understanding of the world, we cannot help but look down on some trivial psychological mistakes of an aspiring writer of the age before modernism. It's fitting to not say anything else about the book and just thank once more the person who insistently recommended it.

Eva, a troubled and an almost silent adolescent in Zedelghem chapter of Cloud Atlas reappears as an unlikely mentor in Black Swan Green. It is there that she mentions Le Grand Meaulnes as an absolute must read. Everything is connected, a thin thread attaches this reader nostalgic for his own lost childhood to David Mitchell and his characters, to François and his great friend Meaulnes, to Alain-Fournier himself, who never got to write another book. He was killed in the first month of the war. show less

A Quoi bon; (whats the point) is what the woman said to Alain Fournier, when he finally plucked up the courage to speak to her, after following her around Paris for days as a very young man. She later added on another occasion "Nous sommes deux enfants, nous avons fait une folie." Alain Fournier never gave up on Yvonne de Quièvrecourt who unwittingly became the inspiration for his first novel which is a classic of French literature. This moment when the young author discovered the pangs of show more an unrequited love is translated into a novel that captures the wonder, the fantasy, the childlike innocence of adolescent love. The Grand Meaulnes took Fournier eight years to complete and it was first published in serial form in 1913.

Le Grand Meaulnes is actually the leading character in the novel: Augustine Meaulnes. He is 17 years old when he is enrolled in a school of mixed age groups in a small provincial town. He is bigger and older than the other boys and soon becomes the boy who everyone wants to know, including Francois who is the son of the head teacher and who tells the story. Meaulnes is disappointed when he is not selected to accompany the head teacher on a trip to the local station to pick up the grand parents. He finds another horse and carriage in town and embarks on a race to get to the station. He gets lost in the winter fog and eventually deep in the countryside sees a light through the trees. He stumbles across fields to find a tumble down chateau which is playing host to a wedding party. There are adults and children dressed in clothes from a previous century and Meaulnes is invited to join in. The bride never arrives but Meaulnes sees and falls in love with Yvonne the bridegrooms (Frantz) sister. Altogether he is away from school for three days and when he finally returns he seems a disturbed young man, obsessed with trying to locate the mysterious chateau in the woods. He eventually takes Francois into his confidence and together they plan to solve the mystery and find Yvonne. This completes the first of the three parts to the romance and the story continues with Meaulnes and Francois search for Yvonne with the added complication of Frantz still in love with the woman who jilted him.

Fournier based his novel very much on his own upbringing. His father was the head teacher at a small school and the sights and sounds of the life of the pupils in a small provincial town are atmospherically portrayed and then suddenly the reader is plunged headlong into Meaulnes adventure and we are in the land of mystery and fantasy and a bit like Meaulnes we do not want it to end. The wedding party seems full of young adults and children and there is magic in the air, there is also romance and there is innocence, but this must change when Meaulnes finally finds his way back to school. He is determined to chase his dreams but as he grows up and searches for love innocence is left behind and choices must be made. The final part of the book which tells the story of Meaulnes relationship with Yvonne is steeped in melancholia, the characters are searching for things lost or for what they never had and the melancholia turns to sadness and sorrow. I found it a deeply affecting book. Why this novel works so well is that even when Fournier is working through the machinations of his plot he still manages to turn the readers attention back to the magical scenes of the first part: for example there is a party thrown to bring Meaulnes, Yvonne and Frantz back together, it is held in a country estate beside the river and the woods and an atmosphere is created similar to the wedding party and Meaulnes even plunges into the woods, but this time he is angered by the actions of Yvonne and her family and the magic is dissipated: it is if his more childlike self was for a moment within reach.

The novel is by no means faultless, there are coincidences that serve to hold the plot together and people appear and disappear it seems at the whim of the author, but nothing can take away the sense of wonder that Fournier creates with his beautiful text, his character may be innocent even puerile, but they live and breathe in Fournier lovely book. A romance, but lodged in realism, an innocence that clings to the characters, a purity that negates the need for any talk about sex. That Fournier manages to pull this off and make it a pleasure for adults to read and read again is a triumph and so five stars. show less