Customer Reviews

The Chateau (Nonpareil Book ; 39)

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The Chateau is a wonderful "travelogue" for people who love well written novels. The story begins with the interesting premise of vacationing in France just after the war. The novel shows the tensions of the "haves" and "have nots" between financially war torn France and the booming post war U.S. The Chateau serves to remind us of the graciousness of everyday life and the small luxuries afforded by simply being American. All of the American insecurities of traveling abroad crop up throughout the novel: (e.g. the gaucheness of being an American, the lack of a long history or the U.S's place in Western Culture). No one character is entirely lovable or wretched. That is precisely what makes it such a thought provoking novel. It is perfect for those who travel or have been to France on an extended trip. Enjoy the book and recommend it to a friend. The story can stand on its own but the writing remains the feast.

This book is not about a Chateau. It's not about France or about tourism. It's not travel writing and it certainly isn't "A Year in Provence". It is about being far from home. It's about being in a fascinating world you don't understand, and how you might interpret all that is in it. It's about how being in that world affects relationships with those you know well, and those you meet along the way. If you've been in unfamiliar territory in your life, you'll recognize yourself in Mazwell's detailed mirror. Man, this is a good book. If yor really want to see the beauty and the agony of being on foreign ground, read The Chateau.

On review, I think this is an evocative and highly skilful rendering of La Belle France three years after the Second World War. Novels like this show something which is quite ineffable in any other form. Nothing much happens for all the life is in the minutiae of the everyday and the France that is captured here and which of course exists no longer is seen through the uncomprehending eyes of the young American couple who insensitively travel about a France where people are still suffering the physical deprivations of the War, still talking incessantly of Nazi soldiers. Despite being Francophiles in theory at least, this inseparable couple, are quite out of their cultural (and linguistic) depth in the French society they encounter, notably at the Chateau and afterwards in Paris. They are rather painful in their efforts not to be overcharged because they are Americans and preoccupied with their own comforts. They are quite put out that the chatelaine of the chateau has not provided them with a double bed as requested and when they request water for bathing it is tepid by the time they get to it. They cannot guess at the heroic efforts of their hostess to keep the chateau at all. The wonder is that they are taken under the wing of some of the guests of the Chateau. Much is made of one guest, Eugene's subsequent froideur towards them. There is no great mystery. His is a personality that blows hot and cold but this exercises the American pair a great deal. Their coupleness is also irritating but here I am expressing a personal prejudice. Published in the early sixties, The Chateau is an interesting read for anyone who has ever travelled to France. I just wouldn't wish Harold and his wife on anyone and certainly not the French.

Harold and Barbara Rhodes visit France in 1948; a country coming to terms with the aftermath of war and occupation and an uncertain Europe.They stay at Beausmesnil Chateau. Misunderstandings arise. Is it cultural? Language barriers? Or a hostility towards the American couple and the country they are from which is dictating the peace with the USSR in a shattered Europe entering a new age....

On face value, this seems a dull tale or travelogue with little action or plot,but it is the quality of Maxwell's writing that gives dimension;of human and international relations;how complex or sinister meanings are given to things that ultimately have no gravity or bearing at all.

Maxwell keeps the readers interest throughout and the characters have real human depth. A fine book.

I loved the flavor of this book; hard to find authors who seem authentic about this period of time; just post WWII. Reminded me of another French travel book Clementine in the Kitchen; which was about a less sad time in this wonderful country.

The main characters aren't extremely interesting, but one wants to get to know the author better; it is as if a friend is telling you the story of these "babes in the woods" Americans. I think I liked Harold and Barbara Rhodes best on their first trip in spite of themselves. They were too sophisticated the second time to be sympathetic characters.

Good read, don't look for much action.

There are literary novels, and then there are Literary Novels. The Chateau is very definitely the latter. It follows, very consciously, the literary path trod by Henry James with his portraits of middle-class Americans encountering the charms and pitfalls of Europe. In this case, we follow Harold and Barbara Rhodes of New York as they visit France in 1948. In James' novels The American and The Portrait of a Lady, the American characters travel to Europe and experience the expected culture clashes, but also become involved in dramatic plots revolving around love and marriage.

Maxwell does not make the Rhodes' jump through any dramatic hoops, choosing instead to show them coping with the difficulties of new social relationships. The Rhodes' arrive in a France that is still just recovering from the war. They begin their four month trip with an extended stay at a small chateau in the Loire Valley. The chateau, owned by Mlle. Vienot, is run as a guesthouse, and Harold and Barbara soon find themselves in a series of new friendships and awkward social entanglements with Vienot's guests and relatives. The action later moves to the south of France, and then Paris, but the Rhodes' remain involved with the people they first met at the chateau.

Maxwell takes an acute look at the social anxieties of the Rhodes, as well as their emotional and psychological reactions to France, Paris, and the pleasures and pains of travel itself. On this level the novel works quite well as a unique insight into the way travel (as opposed to tourism) can be both psychologically upsetting and liberating. The Rhodes' have a short, but blissful, sojourn on the Riviera and Maxwell captures the intensity of the experience through this remark of Harold's at the end of the stay: "I feel the way I ought to have felt at seventeen and didn't."

Where Maxwell is less successful is with his main characters. For the purposes of this kind of novel Harold and Barbara have to be somewhat innocent and naive, which is fine, but they're also rather flat and colourless. This is a bit surprising given that the French characters, even some of the minor ones, come across as complex and fully-rounded. The Rhodes', by comparison, have characteristics but no character. They have, for example, quite an interest in opera and theatre, and yet nothing about them seems artistic, and nothing we learn about their backgrounds make it seem like they'd be culture vultures. At times it feels as though Maxwell made them opera and theatre buffs just to give the Rhodes somewhere to go in the evenings.

Where Maxwell differs most from James is on the prose front. James was famous for a baroque, nuanced style that people either found brilliant or maddening. Maxwell has a leaner, more direct style, and leavens his story with a lot more humour than James ever did. And in the last section of the novel Maxwell even takes a stab at deconstructing his own novel, with a reader (we assume) interrogating the author as to what happened to the various characters after the "end" of the story.

On the whole The Chateau works best as a look at the tensions and rewards of travel. Maxwell's prose is a pleasure, but it also has to be said that there are some self-consciously literary asides and flourishes that are quite distracting. Maxwell was the fiction editor at The New Yorker from the 1940s to the '70s, and at times I got the feeling that this novel was as much about impressing his peers as it was about Harold and Barbara Rhodes.

Read more of my reviews at JettisonCocoon dot com.

The Chateau is a character driven book. If you are looking for action you won't find it here. You will get a glimpse into the lives of two people who you may or may not like but who you will get interested in. William Maxwell was a great writer and his style is very present in this book. You may find the two main characters irritating at times .

Hila