French writer Roger Grenier’s stunning novel tells of a group of friends in the southwest of France whose lives are forever changed by the German Occupation. The moral failings of one of them, Charles Merlin, which at first seem trivial and personal, assume more sinister dimensions when he collaborates with the Nazis. The narrator of the novel, a member of the resistance, watches Charles’s decline and gains a poignant education in his own failings as he tries to rescue the women in Charles’s life.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Set in the decaying French resort town of Pau, this quiet, ascetic novel from the famed French writer tells the story of two men, a Nazi collaborator and the unnamed narrator whose life is bound up with his. At the novel's center is the Villa Rapallo, a splendid home of the wealthy Merline family, which the narrator first enters as a playmate for the family's only son, Charles. Overweight, cowardly and extravagantly spoiled, Charles nonetheless manages to attract friends and, later, beautiful women, who stand by him, no matter what his trespasses. Even the narrator, who views Charles with increasing jealousy and contempt, and who later engages in a long love affair with Charles's wife, never quite abandons him. When Charles wants to avoid obligatory work service in Germany, the narrator procures him false papers at great personal risk, only to discover that the Merlines have collaborated in exchange for Charles's freedom. Even so, the narrator remains in contact with Charles?who, following his postwar imprisonment, dissolves into a failed, dishonest businessman?and can't help regarding him, and the vanished elegance of the Villa Rapallo, with affection. Grenier tells his story through a series of distilled, delicately etched moments, which evoke a melancholy and profoundly nostalgic air while keeping us at a distance from the ghostly men and women who breathe it.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Grenier's haunting short novel is set in German-occupied France during World War II. Focusing on young Charles Merlin and his friends, Grenier depicts a tragic romance in which Charles, spoiled son of wealthy parents, cavalierly destroys the lives of the two women who love him. Narrated as a retrospective memoir by Charles' best friend, this captivating story is a masterwork of eros and pathos. Charles' friend is in love with both the women whose lives Charles ruins, and yet he can neither break off his friendship with Charles nor rescue the women from the fate their involvement with Charles brings them. Presenting a world filled with weary irony and cynical pragmatism, Grenier shows both the noble and the selfish sides of love flourishing within it and demonstrates how difficult it can be to tell the two apart. Densely written and complex despite its brevity, this is a story to be read in an evening and mulled over for months afterward. Bonnie Johnston
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A powerful memory of childhood during wartime,
By A Customer
This review is from: Another November (Paperback)
Another November seems like it might be short and simple. But its unembellished prose carefully and powerfully conjures up images and memories of a troubled history. It is a serious story narrated by a man looking back on his childhood and young adulthood in a small town in southwestern France, and reflecting on the indelible mark left by the German Occupation on young lives. The author masterfully captures the complexity of political reality intersecting with childhood friendships and relationships -- political reality that includes class differences at first and extends to the clash between collaborators and the resistance, signaling the end of childhood. Though the narrator's style, on one level, seemed to keep me at a distance from the characters, seemingly uninvested in their personal struggles, ultimately I was left haunted by them and their choices and by the unsettling combination of normal everyday-ness and profound evil of the Occupation. Grenier makes us feel the way the war would change things forever; yet, he reminds us how some things remained business-as-usual. Eschewing detailed descriptions, he makes us feel the characters' pain and sense the reality of the war. The book is so effective and rewarding, I think, because of the sparse tone and careful turns-of-phrase that stayed with me even after I finished reading, and because of the subtlety of its cues as to what it meant to resist and what it meant to collaborate. It refuses to speak of the war in grandiose, familiar ways; instead, it focuses delicately on its effect on people who were neither its overt victims nor its villains. It makes the reader ponder the ambiguity between how the war changed the life of this small town forever and how life seemd to go on as before. It is a rich memoir of childhood and of war, where much of what was so disturbing about the period remains below the surface for the reader to uncover.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Overlooked little gem,
By hh "hh01" (West Hollywood, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Another November (Hardcover)
This novella has many things going for it. The author's sense of melancholy is superb and his spare, uncluttered writing wastes no space. Yet, while his simple, clean language moves you forward quickly, it leaves you holding souvenirs of every character you meet. And then there are the witty one-liners, such as this one about the change from times of affluence and ennui to austerity ("The good times when we wanted to die were already over.") The only downside to the piece is an aloof style that (reminiscent of Vidal's The Golden Age) keeps you from getting too close to anyone. It isn't haughtiness, just self-protection, but still.
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