Revolutions: Roman

by J.M.G. Le Clézio

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 2070768538
• ISBN13: 9782070768530
• Release Date: February 2003
• Publisher: Editions Gallimard
• Length: 554 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A Family history across centuries and continents

This novel is based on Le Clezio's family history, although the material is used fictionally; his memoir of his father, _L'Africain_, shows some of the changes that he made. It is the story of Jean Marro, a boy in Nice who goes to visit his great aunt Catherine after school. She tells him the story of the family's estate in Mauritius which was lost when she was a young woman, forcing the family back to Europe after more than a century on the island paradise. Learning the family story makes Jean feel that he has a special history and destiny that the rough boys at his lycee could never understand. As Le Clezio describes the city, Nice is a shabby place where refugees and ex-colonials gather rather than a playground of the rich. Ever since he could read, Jean has been enchanted by the name of Aunt Catherine's building, Kataviva. It is named for a Ural railway station and meant to attract rich belle epoque Russians, but by the 1950s it has a drifting and sometimes sinister population. Nice also seems newer than other French cities in this account and Jean reads presocratic philosophers in an old olive grove filled with garbage, bums, and lovers until developers can tear it down to throw up ugly apartments. The Algerian war casts a shadow over Jean and his friends and they are all afraid of what might happen if they are drawn into it. Aunt Catherine's greatest treasure is the Latin book that Jean Eudes Marro used as his diary when he served in the wars of the French Revolution. There are many flashbacks to this ancestor and my favorite part of the book was his march from his village in Brittany, to Paris, and to the battlefield of Valmy. These sections swept me along like the passages on the Great War in Celine's _Voyage au Bout de la Nuit_. In both cases the war is only a small part of a vast tale across continents. To be fair, young Jean meets a former classmate towards the end of the book and says, "Ca lui apprendra a lire Celine." The first Jean returns to Brittany and is torn between his revolutionary ideals (betrayed by a dictatorial government) and his love of his fellow Bretons (who are conservative and suspicious of him). As the political situation worsens he flees to Mauritius; the long sea voyage in wartime is told in his diary entries. Jean loves the beauty of the island, but is shocked by slavery and injustice. His liberalism might be a little too good to be true and the novel expands to include other voices and views. The passages on Mauritius and the Revolution were more interesting than the material on young Jean's coming of age that makes up most of the book, but it is all beautifully written and a perfect introduction to this great writer.