Grammar Is a Sweet, Gentle Song: A Novel [Hardcover]

Érik Orsenna (Author), Moishe Black (Translator), Erik Orsenna (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 2004

In the spirit of The Little Prince, this enchanting fantasy about the adventures of a shipwrecked brother and sister is a book for young people best appreciated by grown-ups.

At the heart of its message is an impassioned plea for the magic and power of words. Jeanne, the tough-minded ten-year-old narrator, and Thomas, fourteen, are traveling to America on an ocean liner to visit their mother when a violent storm sinks their ship and tosses them up on an island. They are unhurt, but the shock of the experience leaves them without the ability to speak. Taken into the care of Monsieur Henri, an elderly islander, Jeanne and Thomas discover that the island is unlike any place they've ever been. There is the Word Market, where Monsieur Henri visits the Poets' and Song-Writers' Corner to see if they have any rhymes for sweet and mom. At town hall, pairs of words are married by the mayor. And Jeanne sneaks off to the Vocabulary of Love Shop, where a woman whose husband has left her wants to buy "a word that will make him understand how hurt I am, a mighty word that will make him ashamed." A celebration of language in all its forms, Grammar Is a Sweet, Gentle Song will delight confirmed word-lovers and inspire the uninitiated with the pleasures of the spoken and written word.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In Orsenna's witty rumination on words and grammar, 10-year-old Jeanne and her 14-year-old brother, Thomas, are shipwrecked on a strange island where words have become independent. Rendered mute, the siblings visit the Word Market, where one can buy the perfect word for any occasion. They also travel to a town full of independent words that strut around without the need for human beings to utter them. The marriages that take place between nouns and adjectives or adverbs are particularly clever: "house, still preceded by the, came out of the shop with the qualifier she liked best: haunted Thrilled with her purchase, she kept telling her articled servant, 'Haunted, imagine that, I've always simply adored ghosts, and now I'll never be alone again.' " Such word adventures help restore the siblings' power of speech. On this level, the book works admirably. The more serious subplots involving the siblings' estranged parents and a cadre of strict grammarians who kidnap Jeanne are betrayed by shallow characterization. Having raised darker and more grown-up questions, the author seems unable to provide answers as satisfying as the open-ended whimsy of his word island. Existing in the precarious middle ground between a children's tale and adult fiction, the novel delights while providing maddening hints of a stronger, more rewarding story.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

A fairy-tale, a parable, a fable, whose message is simple but sobering: we are dying for lack of words. -- Le Figaro

A veritable love-letter to words, sentences, and great books, in the guise of an enchanting island fable. -- Le Magazine Littéraire

This book will capture your heart. -- Marie Claire

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 120 pages
• Publisher: George Braziller, Inc. (April 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807615315
• ISBN-13: 978-0807615317
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,620,120 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Translating profanity. Yikes!, August 27, 2010

By 

E. Gibbons "francophile02" (Gurnee, IL United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Grammar Is a Sweet, Gentle Song: A Novel (Hardcover)

I love, love, love, love, heart, heart, heart this book. I read it in French a few months ago, and I was curious about how some of the elements were translated (like the gender of nouns, as English doesn't have that feature). Obviously, for those who need it, this is a way of accessing a foreign language book. I was just a little disappointed by the force of the profanity. It's one of the hardest things to translate, but I think the "c-word" was a little bit strong for what was there in the first place. I give the original French version 5 stars. Lost in translation, indeed.

5.0 out of 5 stars Very worth reading, August 3, 2009

By 

Ingrid (Boston) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Grammar Is a Sweet, Gentle Song: A Novel (Hardcover)

I received this book as a gift from my former colleagues. Although I don't like reading too much I was through with this wonderful written novel in one day.

It is the story of two children who are stranded on an island - an island consisting of people with love for language and words and shops with wonderful words: long words, short words, rare words, nonsense words.

Jeanne and Thomas are fascinated by the beauty, wealth, amount and variety of words: Lonely nouns are looking to marry well suiting adjectives. Superlatives escaping their dominant owners...

And then Jeanne and Thomas meet some words on another island who escaped the people using them. Will these words find their way home, jump into the people's mouth and enjoy their lives in wordy symbioses with them?

Or will our two young heroes understand the necessity of mixing up languages (like it is heavily done in German), forget about using the words of their ancestors, bury the words of their dialects, or have no words at all? Less words, less to talk about, less problems?

Read the book and you will find out yourself!

I read the German translation and loved it!