Customer Reviews

My Father's Glory & My Mother's Castle: Marcel Pagnol's Memories of Childhood

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A wonderful autobiography by Marcel Pagnol telling of his early childhood with his family in the hills of Provence. Of school, his schoolteacher father, his delicate mother and his rambunctious brother. Of eventful journeys by rail, by foot and by cart from home to their vacation house. Of a joyful time spent exploring a countryside fragrant with wild herbs, full of insects to dissect, birds to hunt and caves to discover. Written in a prose that evokes the simplicity and seriousness of an inquisitive ten year old. And with a bittersweet ending that makes us immediately want to go back to previous pages where we were with him, his family, friends and the hills, tucked safely in summertime warmth and innocence.

My opinion is surely quite distorted since I am french, but please, you american people, read it. I have presented it to so many english or american friends that I have lost track of the number. And all of them told me they loved it.This simple happiness of his childhood in the deep Provence hills is universal. So are the basic values and feelings. love, sun, freedom, friendship.This way of writing, full of humour, light and deep at the same time is really a perfect joy.

(The two books read as one, the second simply taking up--with no exposition--where the first leaves off.) These simple, sunny, nostalgic memoirs of a small boy's happy youth and adventures in the bosom of his loving and often very funny family in Marseilles and the hills of Provence in the early years of this century will captivate anyone who isn't a real Scrooge. They are filled with human understanding, warmth, and humor. Charming and absolutely delightful. Not to be missed.

Pagnol's memoir of growing up in southern France at the beginning of this century is a gem. If you have not read these books, consider yourself lucky to have the pleasure waiting for you. With disarming simplicity and humor, Pagnol narrates his early years in Marseille and the summers he spent with his family in the hills of Provence. Commonplace adventures, like buying used furniture or hunting rabbits in the garrinche with his father, are elevated to amazing heights by the child's imagination and by Pagnol's beautiful prose. Pagnol's memoir is in the same rank with "Angela's Ashes", although his childhood was not so tragic. Read him in the original French, if you can. It is very accessible.

This is a delightful book that I had read many years ago in French, and I was very excited to read it in translation. Unfortunately, I found out after I ordered it that this book is out of print and is considered a "rare, print on demand" book. It took over 6 weeks to arrive, and I almost cancelled my order.

Amazon states that this book ships in 24 hours, but it took more like 1000 hours. If you have the patience to wait for it, the book will not disappoint you, but the slow delivery will. In the meantime, rent or buy the excellent movie version while you're waiting.

even if this book is written by a french author, and is situated in Provence, it is such a highlight of good litterature, as it must be, that is a pleasure to read, a depth in the feelings it shows, and a perfect happines when you have read it. It is about childhood in Provence in the years 1900, about love, friendship, children hollidays in the sunny hills. It is about life!

This is quite simply one of the most enjoyable, moving and humane books I have ever read.

French writer and film maker Marcel Pagnol's memoir of a childhood summer in the countryside of Provence has some satisfying moments, but somehow, for me, it didn't have the impact of the filmed version of the story. When I bought the book (circa 1960 but set around 1905), I was thinking about the incomparable evocation of the south of France that Pagnol's films (the Fanny series, Angele, etc.) contain. Probably unfair to expect the same atmosphere from the book.

For anyone interested in taking this book on--it's the story of a summer spent by Pagnol's family in a rural summer house north of Marseilles--there is a lot here about hunting, the daily lives of a couple of small children and the usual mini dramas that come with family life anywhere. It has its charms, especially in the section titled "My Mother's Castle." Overall, an interesting look at a French family in the early 20th Century, and entertaining through much of the memoir.

How can one possibly pen anything but a glowing review of a book from whose pages one is still feeling the bittersweet warmth, a book whose lovely prose and memories of the author's youth in Provence before WWI has both made me laugh aloud and brought tears to my eyes. I call it "a" book because the two combined books here do truly read as one, with the first chapter of the second book picking up precisely and fluently where the first leaves off.

The book, then, is a sort of litmus test whereby to judge if you still have a heart in you, regardless of your age. As another reviewer puts it, only a Scrooge could put it down unmoved. But Pagnol is also both a lyrical and astute writer. Not many of us could verbally weave our fleeting childhood memories into the lost paradise we encounter in these pages. An example:

"In the central and northern parts of France, when the first brief gusts of wind blow a little too sharply in the early days of September, they pick up in passing a beautiful, bright yellow leaf which turns, slides and swirls as gracefully as a bird.....This forecasts the forests' imminent resignation: they turn russet, then black and gaunt, for all the leaves have flown in the wake of the swallows at the sound of autumn's bugle call."

Pagnol as well has a lively sense of humour, a deep sense of the bonds of family and, above all, the recall of the joy of childhood friendship and of the fleeting days of youth, all these things held in the heart and cherished all the more because of how swiftly they fly from us.

Things are not all wine and roses, of course. The book would be easily dismissible as maudlin if they were. And what youthful joy there is passes swiftly in this short, deeply moving memoir. But, as Pagnol writes near the end:

"Such is the life of man. A few joys, quickly obliterated by unforgettable sorrows.

There is no need to tell the children so."

Nor, during the reading of the greater part of this book, is there need to remind oneself so. It is enough that one's heart is reawakened to the world and made to sing.

I love this book--the films are my favorite--and the book is so sweetly and lovingly written--we could all us a bit of those gentle and tender times.