Customer Reviews

A Very Long Engagement: A Novel

5 star:		(61)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Wow! I just finished this book after reading it every spare minute for the last 2 days. I did not want to put it down. The beginning of this novel is probably the best introduction to a group of characters that I have ever read. Not only for its character development but for the rhythm of the language. A spectacular achievement considering this is translated from the original French.

This is a love story and an intriguing mystery as well as an indictment of the carnage of WWI. And in the midst of the climax of the story, the author gives further detail to a minor character (Mathilde's mother cancelling the cheese course) that had me laughing out loud. How did he know that I needed a break in the tension?

This is a well told story that had me enthralled from beginning to end, deepened my definition of love, taught me more about WWI (Pat Barker's trilogy is fabulous for this also, and just as fascinating) and caused me to appreciate again the privilege of reading great literature and all the benefits truly great books bring to life.

A must read.

A Very Long Engagement is a magical book, one which weaves a tale and catches you in its spell--it will haunt you long after you put it down. The novel begins as five condemned French soldiers walk to their doom during World War I. They have all shot themselves, trying to get out of fighting and as punishment, will be thrown into the no-man's-land between the French trenches and the German trenches. Their families know nothing of this and after they die, are told them men died honorably. A few years later, Mathilde, the fiance of one of the men discovers some of the truth about what happened and she becomes convinced that her fiance has did not die--or at least did not die as she was told. She tries, doggedly, to uncover the truth. Along the way, she discovers many atrocities of that war. The novel pulls you along to its rather unexpected, yet still deeply satisfying ending, pulls you so much you won't be able to put this one down. The power of love, the strength of friendship, the failure of memory--all these come into play in this outstanding novel. I highly recommend this novel to all devoted readers. It's a bit of a challenge, following all the little clues Matilde gets, putting the truth together and tossing out the lies, but it's worth it. Enjoy.

I read this book in one sitting. I couldn't put it down. Japrisot not only artfully held the suspense until the last possible moment, he gave me such wonderful characters to care about that I couldn't *help* but frantically turn the pages trying to find out Did Manech die or didn't he?? But it's not just a good mystery story. It's realistic historical fiction that gave me a vivid sense of the trenches and post-war life. It's a beautiful, painful romance story. It's a clever, astute rendering of how people help each other and lie to each other and care for each other and punish each other. All of this, brilliant at every facet, in one little book. It's a brilliantly *woven* story...like Mathilde, the heroine, you have to hold on tho the wire and don't let go until you get to the end as Japrisot winds you through his labyrinthine tale.

The plot, the characters, the story, these are all very good, and very compelling, but I can't help but be annoyed at the translation.

If you speak French, you can see right through lines that have been poorly translated too literally, and areas where too much liberty has been taken to get a particular point. At least, I hope this is the fault of the translator and the original is not this poorly done. My experience of French literature has been such that I can't imagine muddled phrases and incomplete lines would receive the resounding praise in France as is advertised on the book jacket.

Worst of all, I have found myself frequently reading the re-reading a sentence three or four times to discover in vain what the devil is going on.

In a description of Angel and another soldier's pact to shot each other in the hand (p.14): "At the last moment, because his entire being felt revulsion at the prospect of keeping his word, Angel had snatched his hand away from the mouth of the other man's gun and had closed his eyes. He'd pulled the trigger on his own gun, however. Now he was missing two joints from a ring finger and the tip of a middle finger, but the cootie-counting days of the other poor clod were over for good, as he'd taken Angel's blast full in the face, and the horses, desperate to escape this mess of human lunacy, had trampled the rest of him to a pulp."

First off, it sounds as if Angel pulls his hand away totally, but you find that's not so. Then, it makes you go back and re-read the passage a few more times, wondering, "Did Angel shoot this guy in the face? What am I missing?" My only conclusion is that the translator could have used different words, such as "full on in the hand." For all that, the translator could also have avoided the painful use of phrases such as "cootie-counting days."

Is the original this bad as well?

I like a good story as much as the next person, but part of what makes it great is the telling.

I read this for my book club, and was surprised to find that so many women in my group could not get into this book! Some gave up after 5, 10 or even 50 pages. They were frustrated by what they saw as choppy translations and hard-to-remember French names. Those who did finish the book, like me, found it to be so rewarding! (Actually, I didn't have any difficulty getting into it from the get-go, but I do admit to making a cheat sheet to keep track of the characters' names and aliases.) The end is not cheesy, where many American writers and film makers would take this path. I did see it coming a bit, but it was still handled beautifully and with sincere emotion. I really liked how the author took a circular approach to this story, returning again and again to the same scene, each time with a new perspective or missing piece of the puzzle. Well worth the effort. I would definitely recommend reading this one.

I confess that I feel just a bit stingy in offering only four stars to this book, because I cannot identify a single area in which it is lacking. Japrisot's story is both moving and entertaining, the characters are richly developed and easy to care about, and the events described seem completely credible.

I guess I find myself comparing it to books like ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT and A FAREWELL TO ARMS, which is, of course, grossly unfair. For one thing, it could reasonably be argued that those books are among the best written in the twentieth century, and how fair is it to judge every new novel on its ability to measure up favorably to such a standard? Secondly, although ENGAGEMENT is about the First World War, it is more accurately read as mystery/love story.

My favorite thing about this novel is the way in which Japrisot offers the reader an opportunity to form quick intitial judgements about many of the characters, and then slowly provides the reader a deeper understanding of these individuals and their motives as the book progresses. I found that, by the end of the book, I liked almost everyone involved in this story. Perhaps not a "great" book, but certainly a very good one - and a damned sight better than most of what has proven to be publishable/marketable over the last fifteen to twenty years.

I made the mistake of starting this book, misplacing it, finding it, and discovering I couldn't pick up where I'd left off and had to start at the beginning again. It's just not a book to read casually. You've got to concentrate and pay attention and read long chunks at a time.
Dissatisfied with the official account of her lovers death in WWI, crippled artist Mathilde sets out to learn the truth. Here's the deal: five soldiers were condemned to death for self-mutilation. The manner of their execution was odd: they were forced into the no-man's-land between the French and German lines and left to fend for themselves. Everyone assumed they would all quickly die, but it seems at least one didn't . And there's confusion about his identity. And there's the fact that one of the buried men was wearing German boots, so what's that all about?
A spellbinding and enchanting story, Japrisot's A Very Long Engagement is a little of everything: history, mystery, romance, intrigue, and all done in a splendidly literary style.
This book was translated from the French, which may account for a small bit of the obscureness of the writing. But oh boy, is it worth sticking with it. If you're not smokin' anything, not drinkin' anything - if you're paying attention all the time, you're in for a superb reading experience.

I never would have guessed a book like this out of Japrisot after reading his 60s noir stuff -- I read it once when it first came out in English, read it too fast in the way that dogs and children are apt to gobble their food faster than the speed of tasteability, and then (as is the way with most good books) everyone I knew borrowed it and then leant it to their friends, and so on -- 2.5 years went by -- the book wound up in the hands of my friend Ted, one of the ten or twelve inhabitants of the planet who actually have the cojones to return a long-overdue book (I am NOT one of that rare dozen, by the way)mailed it back to me, and I read it twice, and it was even better than I remembered it, especially at Round 3, when I actually chilled out and read it at an excruciating turtlespace... To be able, at the cranky and over-post-post-contemporarized fin de siecle, to write such an overwhelmingly beautiful and downright odd love story without resorting to worn-lace nostalgia or otherwise bowing away from what presently squats before us as the toadlike specter of our world -- that's a feat worth more than ten million silly opinions. My own included.

Five desperate men shoot themselves in order to be relieved from the horrifying frontline at the Somme, in WWI. A court-martial decides to punish them by leaving them alone in no-man's land, to be killed in the crossfire. Then all hell breaks loose and they all die. Or not?
One of these men's fiancée, a young girl who can't walk since age 3, receives information that makes her suspect his boyfriend might have gotten away alive. So she embarks in a painful, long and often frustrating ordeal to find out the truth.
Along the way, I got to really love Matti. She's kinda spoiled and obstinate, but she is a wonderful person, full of true love. Other characters are equally appealing, and the story of Manech and his infortunate companions at war is revealed bit by it, through confusing memories and even contradictory pieces of information.
We discover a terrible but beautiful story through what Clausewitz called "the fog of war". And this story is about courage, nobility, cruelty, loyalty, friendship and, above all, true love.
Absolutely recommended, it is a novel that will easily remain in your memory.

I've just finished reading this book, and I wish it was seventy-five thousand million trillion pages longer. Japrisot's prose is elegant, the plot is riveting, and the protagonist is someone I wish I knew in real life. You will want to read it in one sitting; it's that good. I'm a voracious reader who generally reads 1-3 books each week, and I would rank this one as the best I've read in the last six months (and there have been some contenders, let me tell you.) The translation manages to let the elegance of the writing shine through. I can't say enough good things, so I'll just stop here!