When the Mountain Fell

A predecessor to Jean Giono and Robert Seethaler. I found Ramuz’s writing and his depiction of nature well-done and, if not to my personal taste, impressive in its way. He devotes much of the book to his descriptions of the implacable majesty of the Alps. Ramuz often relies on repetition—sometimes repeating words or phrases multiple times in a row, sometimes repeating entire small sections later for emphasis. And though he never does so directly, Ramuz gives a strong sense that the mountains and nature have a will of their own. I wish I could say that I was equally impressed with one of his “messages,” one that he conveniently boils down to a single sentence toward the end of the book: “The mountain was evil, it was show more all-powerful, but now one powerless woman had risen up against its might, and had conquered, because she loved, because she was brave.”) The story itself is based on a real event from 1714, a cataclysmic landslide in Derborence (the name of the novel in French), Switzerland. The first half of the book is taken up with the landslide itself and the second half with its aftermath. A sense of something indefinable, of something vaguely supernatural pervades much of the writing—it’s the atmosphere that Ramuz creates through his style rather than any event or character directly. I will read more of him but I’m not entirely certain what my judgment is after only this book. show less

This is not a review but I can find no other place to say that Deborence is online:
http://www.dpeck.info/write/derborence.pdf. A very good book, though not Ramuz's best, in a translation that was literally a labour of love.

345. When the Mountain Fell, by C.-F. Ramuz (read 15 Aug 1948) On Aug 15, 1948, I said: "Read an astonishing book tonight: When the Mountain Fell: amazing, beautiful, moving."