Customer Reviews

Grey Souls

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

 

 

For some reason, I've read about a half-dozen novels in the past year that are set in Europe during World War I. Perhaps I wanted to read some of these books in short order to better compare them to one another. The best of these novels, in my opinion, were All Quiet on the Western Front (Remarque), Three Mile Road (Boyden), and In Desolate Heaven (Edric). Having just completed All Souls by Philippe Claudel, however, I now have to put this novel at the top of the list. This elegantly written mystery serves as a metaphor for the horrors that are beginning to take root in Europe. This is a modern classic and it is not surprising to me that Claudel was recently awarded the 2010 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.

"Grey Souls" (which is not available in a Kindle edition) was republished some two years later as "By a Slow River" . This newer version is sold in hard copy at a fraction of the price of "Grey Souls" and is also available in a Kindle edition. The two translations are of VERY different styles. The "By a Slow River" version, while beautifully written unfortunately lapses too often into American vernacular which strikes a jarring note. I sugest the "By a Slow River" version which receives very favorable ratings on Amazon

The locale (as in Claudel's "Brodeck" and his screenplay for "I Loved You a Long Time") is Alsace and this time the time is WW1. I bought this book because I was blown away by "Brodeck". I m not sure which is the better work - so read both

I thought this sounded like a book taking place near the town of Verdun, France (where I lived for three years). It was a totally disjointed story and boring, boring, boring. I finally ended up scanning it to the end (and the ending was bad).