By a Slow River: A Novel

by Philippe Claudel

Book Overview

This is ostensibly a detective story, about a crime that is committed in 1917, and solved 20 years later. The location is a small town in Northern France, near V., in the dead of the freezing winter.... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1400078016
• ISBN13: 9781400078011
• Release Date: June 2007
• Publisher: Anchor
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.0" x 0.4" x 5.2"

Customer Reviews

Hypnotic

I can't imagine anyone wanting to skim a book this short and this hypnotic. The translation from French is so bright, beautiful and compelling it seems impossible it could have been written in anything but English. Though drawn on by the voice, the deepening mystery and the devastating portrayal of a world at war, I often stopped to not just re-read gorgeous, striking, mordant passages, but to read them aloud to my spouse, who later read the book and loved it, too. The French have a genius for writing short, dark mysteries (think Thierry Jonquet) that continues to astound me, given all the years I was bombarded as a mystery reviewer by big fat empty American thrillers (Deaver, Baldacci) that were apparently written under the assumption that "nothing succeeds like excess." I'd give this book six stars if an extra one were available.

Murder and War

Philippe Claudel's book takes the reader back in time to World War 1 in the Lorraine region of France. Already crushed by the war, the little community of V. is even more shaken by a series of suicides that culminate with the murder of a little girl. Although set in France between 1914 and 1937 (time when the narrator relates his memories), the book is strangely universal: war happens anywhere at any time and is no more than legalized crime; crime also happens anywhere at any time and when it is a small child that is involved, it remains all the more horrific. The reader quickly forgets that it is World War I and can easily apply the events to contemporary times, contemporary facts of war. The author also manages to convey intensity through the rich use of the lexical fields of blood: war, murder, suicide, delivery hemorraghy, death, and the permanence of the gray that is part of the French title. Are those "Ames grises" ghosts, are they grey because real life is never black and white, are they "grises" because they are drunk (in French, someone is "gris" when he or she ha had too much to drink, and in the book, it is the civilians and the soldiers' main occupation apart from dealing with the war)? There is no doubt that the author also played on Gogol's famous book "Dead Souls". Until the very end, the author manages to capture the reader's intrerest and there is indeed no clues as to who has committed the crime. I will certainly not waste the reader's surprise.

Heartbreakingly beautiful

This is one of the most beautifully written novels I've read in a long time. I can only imagine what it must have been like in its original French. At the same time, it is an existential story of cold, lost men, the grey souls alluded to in the book's original title. The stark juxtaposition of life-as-usual in a small town and the bombs of a world war bursting only a few kilometers away defines the novel. Its non-chronological construction gives readers snapshots in time and then backs up to show the confluence of events that conspired to create the gritty reality contained in those images. Profoundly touching, and full of observations that make me as a reader nod in agreement.

terrific psychological historical thriller

Former Police officer Dadais reflects back two decades to December 1917, the French villagers are shocked when the strangled corpse of ten years old girl Belle "Morning Glory" Bourrache is found by the banks BY A SLOW RIVER that slices through a small, unnamed French village. The townsfolk find the crime hideous as the murder of a child could only have been done by an animal. On the other hand he wonders how everyone including him takes for granted that the nearby battles against Germans will leave both sides filled with uncountable numbers of dead. Dadais remembers how he struggled to uncover the identity of the repulsive killer. Clues are not readily available but the stubborn Dadais insists that two suspects stick out, egotistical retired sexagenarian "Mr. Prosecutor" Pierre-Ange Destinat and that shadowy Breton war deserter, who admits he committed the murder, but Dadais knows he would have confessed to anything under the torture used to extract his admittance. Others wonder if Dadais wonders if others are as determined to hide the identity of the real culprit as he is to find him.. This is a terrific psychological historical thriller masked somewhat as a police procedural. Dadais is wonderful protagonist looking back at the case that obsessed him and his townsfolk when at the same time they understood the absurdity of caring about one death when millions were "legally" dying nearby. Philippe Claudel cleverly echoes Joseph Stalin's alleged comment that "one death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic." Readers will appreciate this off beat suspense thriller as they wonder just who murdered that little girl. Harriet Klausner

Like discovering a classic

I was especially fascinated by Claudel's handling of the theme of murder during a time of war (WWI): on a gut level it's a perfectly crafted who-dunnit, with an amazing twist. The policeman who narrates the story thinks he's a pretty sharp judge of human nature, but he learns a thing or two not just about his neighbors but ultimately about himself, as he tries to solve the murder of little girl while the sons of the nation are being slaughtered at the front near his town. Ultimately he finds you can't completely uncover anyone's nature, not even your own. This is such an interesting book and such a beatifully told story--like discovering a classic--I want all my friends to read it so we can discuss. You'll be thinking about these characters long after you put the book down. Held me from start to finish. Bravo!