Customer Reviews

The Testament of Yves Gundron

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Most times, when I read a book that I don't really like, I will pretty much swear off the writer, but I won't do that with Emily Barton. The Testament of Yves Gudrun was ultimately a little too uneven for me and left me with too many unanswered questions; it just didn't make sense, when I think it was actually trying to. To her credit, Barton writes well, is imaginative, has a good ear for dialog, and has a certain uncanny knack for getting in these little zingers that make you think here and there in the narrative. The premise of the novel is pretty interesting. We read about a pre-industrial society that, we soon realize, exists in the current day. They are visited by Ruth Blum, a young anthropologist at the same time Yves invents a few technical improvements which begin to change their society. Barton also tells the story from an interesting point of view (instead of from Ruth's point of view, she tells it from that of Yves'.) But--there are also some problems with this novel. First of all, I just don't think the narrative hung together. It almost struck me as a first draft, one that needs a little work to become something wonderful, which was frustrating. Or perhaps it was a short story, that should have ended at page 30. Some things just made no sense, like why did Yves' wife sing the blues? Why did they focus on Ruth's love of toast? I also think this novel would have been improved with some research. It struck me that she just made things up about how a pre-industrial society would operate. The details just seemed a little too inauthentic. That being said, I think Ms. Barton is talented and will try her next effort.

Ms. Barton has written a thoroughly engaging and involving story. That it is her first novel makes it all the more remarkable! The narrative moves so seamlessly from one paradoxical episode to the next that I hardly noticed how my assumptions were being challenged. The testament is both innocent and wise, so the reader cannot help but share Yves' delight, sorrow, pride and wonder as he observes and records the marvelous events of his life. The other characters who inhabit the world of Mandragora are simultaneously bizarre and believable. Some very funny episodes balance the underlying seriousness of the novel's dilemma.

As the novel moved toward what I understood to be the inevitable outcome, I became more and more reluctant for it to end. Despite the difficult choices she poses for her characters (and her readers), Ms. Barton has written a story that is easy and satisfying to read. I look forward with pleasure to her next novel!

I was mystified as to how something as innocent as a simple harness could change so much in it's wake. Barton creatively written story kept me guessing. The harness, a cornucopia of geometrically explosive chain reactions. Barton's choice of the harness which normally represents constraint has been directly juxtaposed into an uncontrollable unleashing of one event triggering another.

The book brings to mind Shangri-La from James Hilton's "Lost Horizon" and Lerner and Lowes' "Brigadoon."

I enjoyed the book. It is a good book for the year 2000. For each step we have progressed we have lost part of ourselves. We are no longer in turn with nature, no longer kind to strangers. We've lost the beauty and richness of our language. We lost the ability to share our good fortune with our neighbors. We've lost our roots, our uniqueness.

We still have wars, poverty, mental illness, and illiteracy. We have prolonged life at the cost of prolonging death. Basic amenities, growing with each successive generation, for some are never enough.

It's a good reflective book that opens one's mind to all that we have lost and have little we have progressed in developing our humanity. We have more but are less for it.

The San Francisco Chronicle Online Book Club chose Emily Barton's "The testament of Yves Gundron" for it's 1/16 - 2/19 selection. Please join us by chiming in our online bulletin board. We would love to hear any additional thoughts that you might have.

What a fascinating read! Emily Barton's novel is taut, intelligent and just really, really fun. It has some debut-author unevenness, but those bits are forgivable, as the characters come to life and the plot engrosses the reader. I can't believe this book wasn't a best-seller--I do see that it was NY Times Notable Book, which it richly deserves to be. I would give this book four and a half stars if that were possible; since it is not, I rounded up.

Well worth the time.

Emily Barton sets her Luddite fable, "The Testament of Yves Gundron", in Mandragona, an isolated section of one of the Hebrides Islands off Scotland's west coast. Farmer Yves Gundron, the narrator, lives in a society so primitive that when he invents a harness that allows his horse to pull a wagon or a plow without chocking to death it transforms his community. After Yves shares his invention with his neighbors farming in Mandragora quickly becomes more productive. Next Yves devises a two-wheeled cart to take advantage of the greater load-pulling capacity of the harnessed horse. Yves' neighbors attribute his inventiveness to his grandmother Iulia, a stranger who washed ashore from no-one-knows-where.

Yves' brother Mandrik is the only Mandragonian in memory to have ventured into the unknown world beyond -- and he returned a holy man bearing fruit trees and tales of Indo-China. The reader must accept the peculiar lack of curiosity Mandragonians have about the world outside their tiny fief as normal human behavior -- a heavy suspension-of-disbelief burden to bear.

Yves and his neighbors prosper through the increased produce they can grow and transport to market in Nnms, Mandragora's only town. (In Mandragora, farm surpluses are apparently absorbed more easily than elsewhere) Archduke Urbis of Nnms encourages the commerce by enlarging the market square and starting a road paving project.

It seems to be the dawn of a golden age. Then a stranger arrives from over the mountains -- the first new arrival since Yves'grandmother. Ruth is her name and she speaks a strange form of English and wears strange clothes. (Her C.V. is eerily similar to that of Ms. Barton, herself) Mandragora will never be the same again.

Thomas Pynchon's dust jacket blurb describes the story as "Blessedly post-ironic...deeply respecting the given world even as it shines with the integrity of dream." Ms Barton may respect the given world of Yves Gundron, but I question whether she has had much familiarity with the hard, unending, physical labor and starvation diet of a subsistence farmer. The roseate hue of the lens through which Barton pictures the lives of the primitive farmers of Mandragona bespeaks an innocence of experience. Like Thomas Jefferson, she dreams of an agrarian utopia where "the scythes sing through the rye" -- in the hands of others.

Yves is an attractive creation -- a sort of stoic saint: devout -- and yet clear-eyed, inventive -- yet conservative, sensitive -- yet enduring. There are so many loose ends to this story one wonders if we will hear from him again.

I thoroughly enjoyed Ms. Barton's debut. It's a fresh take on an old concept, told in such a way that you don't want the story to end. If Mandragora existed, it would be flocked to by tourists trying peer into the future and the past at the same time. It's the perfect example of how no one can observe without participation.

I wasn't sure what this book was about or where it was taking me, but as the plot unfolds I couldn't put it down and it's now one of my favorite books. One of the cleverest, most imaginative stories I've ever read, with a great message about our lives today. It's not at all religious, just very thoughtful and thought-provoking. A great book to share and discuss. If you have the opportunity to read this book, or are thinking about, just do it! Can't wait for Ms. Barton's next.

What a fine book! Smoothly written, well structured, a challenging theme and a wonderful imagined world. One of the best books I have read in 5 or 10 years. Impressive for a first-time author just out of the gate; I hope she lives another hundred years and gives us a book of this quality every year. I usually despair about the current state of American fiction, but this book has restored my hope.

I found this first novel by Emily Barton to be touching, exhilarating, dreamlike and edifying.

The medieval village of Mandragora hides, relatively untouched by the passage of time, within a ring of mountains on an island off the coast of Scotland.

The inhabitants of Mandragora struggle through their difficult lives with no knowledge or concept of the modern world outside until a young anthropologist, Ruth Blum, arrives to study this almost mythical place of her dreams. Ruth is aware that any hint or idea from outside can drastically change the culture that she has discovered, but it appears that change has already begun with the invention, by farmer and narrator Yves Gundron, of a harness for his horse. Before Yves embarked on his inventing, the carts of Mandragora had only one wheel, and horses were attached to them with a rope around their neck which inevitably led to death by strangulation.

Yves' family generously takes in Ruth, gives her a pallet on their floor, becomes central to the world shaking changes yet to occur.

This story is told in Yves' voice with occassional footnote explanations by Ruth. He speaks most poetically and reverently of the basic lives lived by the Mandragorans, of his relationship with God and with his many relatives past. He is so well painted, as are Ruth, his family members and the characters of the town and the nearby "city" of Nnms, that we convincingly share his world view and his fears and feelings.

Although yet another tale of the "fall from grace", I found this novel to be a touching, poetic and exhilarating read.

Very highly recommended!

A delightful novel full of pleasant surprises and beautiful prose. The age of invention (at warp speed), religion, death and love are themes that flow through this finely crafted story that filled my soul with appreciation for how fortunate my life is, and how lucky we are to have a book like this to enjoy. If you want to meet a cast of characters whom you will consider family after a few chapters and can't wait to find out what happens to them next, this is the book for you. This book even brought me joy while raking leaves this weekend.