Review by New York Times Review
THE STORY COULD hardly be simpler. Five young Frenchmen leave their village to fight in the Great War. Some will be grievously injured, some won't return. But in the hands of France's literary magician Jean Echenoz, this exceedingly short, bare narrative - 118 pages, counting eight pages of translator's notes - feels like an epic. Here is history compressed to the density of a poem. The novel begins on the first day of August 1914 (the marking of time will be a theme), in a radiant pastoral landscape. A cyclist, Anthime, looks down from a hill on the market towns below, disturbed only by a loud "unseasonable eruption of wind rampaging everywhere." When it dies away, he hears church bells somberly ringing the tocsin, a signal of mobilization. That noisy, disorderly gust of wind is no clumsy symbol. It is as close as we will get to an analysis or explanation of the hostilities to come. Unseen forces, natural and naturally indifferent, are about to sweep Anthime and his friends toward the trenches of the Somme. Echenoz's novels are often the opposite of realistic - playful fantasies in which characters bounce in and out of sight like acrobats on a trampoline, with plots that hopscotch wildly over time and space. But in "1914" numerous details pin us to a precise historical reality: the brand name of a camera, the "Rêve Idéal," or the "licorice-brown canvas" of a French soldier's knapsack. In a Farman F-37 biplane, one of the crew members pulls out "a Savage pistol especially adapted for aviation, fitted with a screen to catch spent casings so they won't stray into the propeller." Such authenticity creates a world of objects that are brought to life by Echenoz's unmistakable voice. Witty, passionate, by turns intimate and coolly distant, it is a voice fond of long, lovingly assembled Rabelaisian lists that provide a perfect foil to the chaos of combat. One remarkable chapter describes all the notable animals of World War I, from the largest and most useful (cows) to the smallest and most hated (lice), with a bleak coda on the rat Another inventories the "astonishing variety of furniture woods" in a bedroom and concludes that they do not get along, "they cannot even stand one another." At times this form of narration may strike readers as grotesquely dispassionate. Horrifying scenes are rendered in a tone drained of all emotion: "Anthime and Bossis could see the incineration of two airmen killed on impact and still strapped in, transformed into sizzling skeletons hanging by their seat straps." Elsewhere, Echenoz defuses shock with ludicrous mathematics: "a bullet travels 40 feet through the air at 3, 280 feet per second at an altitude of 2, 300 feet to enter the left eye of Noblès." And then, unexpectedly, an image flies off the page to create a human context: A piece of shrapnel is "as clipped as a postscript: an iron fragment shaped like a polished Neolithic ax, smoking hot." Or the downy lightness of Echenoz's French - perfectly captured by the translator, Linda Coverdale - turns grimly lyric. In a town emptied of all its young men, "Blanche sees only old fellows and kids, whose footsteps sound hollow on a stage too large for them." And once or twice, Echenoz's profound and hopeless fury, held in check by the brevity and reserve of his storytelling, breaks through the latticework of words: "We all know the rest." Echenoz's novels can be the opposite of realistic, but in '1914' details pin us to reality. MAX BYRD'S most recent novel is "The Paris Deadline."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [January 26, 2014]
Review by Library Journal Review
Celebrated French author Echenoz (Ravel; Lightning) turns his attention to World War I in this short novel about two brothers who go to war and the woman they leave behind. Young Anthime has previously only existed in the shadow of his charismatic older brother Charles, but the losses he sustains in the war permanently change how he views both himself and the life he's led. Meanwhile, Blanche, the woman both brothers love, waits to discover whether either will be coming home to her. VERDICT Echenoz memorably captures the grotesque facts of life in the trenches in economical prose that combines vivid sensory images with moments of biting dark humor. The book's primary power lies not in its plot or its characters but in the skill with which the author transports the reader to the front lines in scenes mixing a wry, conversational narrative style with meticulously described details: the precise weight of a knapsack, the deafening sound of shells overhead, the inescapable stench of rotting corpses. A short but immersive read. (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Four young Frenchmen confront the grim reality of trench warfare in a spare, elliptical novel from Goncourt-winner Echenoz (Lightning, 2011, etc.). We see just what they are leaving behind in the idyllic scene that opens the book, as Anthime bicycles in the hills of the Vende region, pausing to view a panorama of pastures and villages under the August sun. Then the church bells begin ringing, and he returns to the town square to learn that war has been declared. "It won't last longer than two weeks," says his intimidating brother Charles, but of course, readers know better. We follow Anthime and his pals Padioleau, Bossis and Arcenel to the barracks (where arrogant Charles commandeers the best-fitting uniform) and on parade past cheering citizens. They include Blanche, whose family runs the factory where Anthime and Charles work; both brothers are in love with her, but she prefers Charles. It's a nasty twist of fate that Blanche's successful attempt to get Charles transferred away from danger in the infantry results in his death in a plane crash, leaving her to bear his child alone and unmarried in January. Bogged down in the trench line that "had suddenly congealedfrom Switzerland to the North Sea," Anthime is congratulated by his comrades on losing his arm to a piece of shrapnel; it's a "good wound" that will extricate him from the senseless bloodshed Echenoz matter-of-factly describes. His companions fare less well: Bossis is gruesomely killed, Arcenel shot for desertion and Padioleau is blinded by gas. As the author himself remarks, "[a]ll this has been described a thousand times," and Echenoz doesn't offer anything new in the way of character or insight to justify his retelling, though his restrained, elegant prose (nicely translated by Coverdale) remains a pleasure. A readable fictional introduction to the Great War for those who know nothing about it but inessential for anyone who's read Ernest Hemingway or John Roderigo Dos Passos.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
