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A King Alone (1947)

af Jean Giono

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344874,686 (3.77)14
This is the first English-language translation of Jean Giono's 1947 masterpiece, Un Roi Sans Divertissement, A King Without Diversion , which takes its title from Pascal's famous remark that "a man without diversions is a man with misery to spare." Giono's novel is an existential detective story set in a snowbound mountain village in the mid-nineteenth century. Deep in winter, inhabitants of the village begin mysteriously to disappear, and Langlois is sent to investigate. A manhunt begins and Langlois brings the case to what appears to be a successful conclusion. Some years later, again in winter, Langlois returns to the village, now having been promoted to the position of captain of the brigade that protects the inhabitants and their property from wolves. Langlois is a charismatic and enigmatic kingly figure who fascinates the villagers he has been sent to protect, and yet he feels set apart from them and from himself, and as he pursues the wolf who is preying on the village, he identifies more and more with the murderer who had been his earlier target. The splendid, tormented Langlois is very much at the center of the novel, but he is surrounded by a full cast of remarkable characters. There is Sausage, the "saucy" and "sassy" cafe owner; Fre de ric II, the brave sawmill owner who tracks the killer; Ravanel Georges, an almost-victim of the murderer; the potbellied Royal Prosecutor with his profound knowledge of "men's souls"; the murdered Marie Chazottes and her "peppery blood"; and an exotic woman from the "very high" places in Mexico who befriends Langlois and Sausage. In Alyson Waters's outstanding translation the many voices in this wonderfully inventive and diverting novel by one of the most perennially popular of modern French writers come to brilliant life in English.… (mere)
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» Se også 14 omtaler

Engelsk (4)  Fransk (4)  Alle sprog (8)
Viser 1-5 af 8 (næste | vis alle)
set aside for Advent reading - will finish in 2024
make note of reference to the 'beech' aka Haya - first introduced p 7 and referenced again end of story - and place in Arbustos - which I lugged home from Spain ( )
  Overgaard | Dec 8, 2023 |
In a mountain village in mid-19th-century France, there's a serial killer on the loose. The intrepid investigator Langlois tracks him down and finds himself changed by the pursuit. Jean Giono is capable of creating the most vivid, engaging depictions of people and place—I could really picture the hills and houses in which A King Alone takes place. This is a novel of great atmosphere. Could I, however, understand what was happening past about the mid-point of the book? Increasingly, no. This may well be a failure of comprehension on my part rather than an issue with Giono's writing, but I spent a lot of time towards the end of the book saying "Who's speaking?", "What's happening now?", and then blinking a lot at the conclusion. ( )
  siriaeve | Aug 5, 2023 |
This one was headed for five stars... and then, sadly, just went haywire.

People are disappearing in a village in southeastern France, deep in the forests and mountains, in the mid 19th century. Just there one day, and then gone, leaving their cottage door open, and food on the table. A woman, a man... what happened to them? Here rides in Commander Langlois, taciturn, serious, mysteriously charismatic. He takes charge. The village rallies round him, the men follow him eagerly to search for a killer. Then one day, a villager spots a man scrambling down from a famous beech tree and strolling away in the snow. The villager discovers steps have been nailed into the tree, climbs, and discovers the frozen corpses of the missing, stashed in the tree like a leopard's prey. Alone, he tracks the man - a long, tense, beautiful hunt through the snowy trees, after a murderer who saunters into a neighboring village and a rather nice house. Langlois musters his posse, and they go after him, to a sudden and odd end. The tale is fragmented, told in bits and pieces by different citizens of the village to a narrator who is assembling this tale many years later from memories of sons and nieces and one or two old folks. It is atmospheric and lyrical, with dazzling descriptions the day fall arrives, of the fog in the hills, of the voices of the villagers, of blood on the snow, and of a legendary ash tree that on its accustomed autumn day suddenly sprouts "a plume of golden parrot feathers on its skull."

A year later, Langlois returns to the village, this time as the head of a wolf-hunting force, and he is going to live there for good. But he is different now: aloof, solitary, rarely drops more than a word with anyone. His nameless horse, however, loves everyone - walking free in the roads, nickering affectionately, seeking cuddles and strokes, and willingly offers himself to anyone who needs a horse to haul a cart. During a harsh winter, one old wolf breaks its tacit agreement and butchers the livestock in a barn. Once again, Langlois marshals the hunters, who once again carry out their precisely led sortie into the forest to corner the rogue wolf. It is tense, dark, cold, and bloody in the flaring torchlight, more savage. (Poor wolf, say I.)

And then it just goes haywire. There is a long, peculiar visit to an embroiderer with two lady friends... apparently, Langlois wants to get married but hasn't a clue how to conduct this kind of woman-hunt. He pretends to sleep in a chair while the ladies pretend to be intensely interested in the plain "gray woman's" needlework. They have inexplicably cryptic conversation. Nothing happens. I skimmed ahead... nothing made any more sense. I skipped to the final page - aha, there is a last gorgeous flash of drama and pyrotechnic desperation. But how did they get there? I don't know. Maybe I'll go back and try again.

Splendid imagery, emotional tension, a dark and menacing yet gloriously beautiful atmosphere - an intricate narrative structure, and somehow this all feels like what one might expect from a man who survived Verdun, where he was one of the two men who survived in his company. But the narrative seems to just wander off into something like madness in the final quarter. And yet I feel as though I'm the one who has failed Giono, rather than that he has failed me. ( )
  JulieStielstra | Jul 25, 2023 |
In telling this story involving a serial killer, a hunt for a marauding wolf, and at least two deaths, perhaps accidental, Jean Giono creates an unsettling air early. “The light turns the color of hare innards, then an extraordinary black that, black as it is, has shadows of deep purple.”

And: “All the farm can do is hide in the ground and it’s plain to see that it’s doing just that with all it’s might.” That’s before we know what the story even is.

In 1843 Langlois, who is said to possess “a deep knowledge of human things,” arrives at a remote French alpine village. He tracks and shoots, possibly by accident, a serial killer. Some years later he returns for good as the resident wolf hunter. He befriends a former prostitute and a Captain’s wife, “beautiful and languid like a lake afternoon in June,” but remains removed from, but respected by, most other residents. Things turn when he takes a younger wife from Grenoble and the end of the story is sharp and brutal. ( )
  Hagelstein | Jun 11, 2023 |
J’ai étudié cette œuvre en seconde, je m’en souviens très bien parce qu’elle m’avait fait une forte impression. Avec cette écoute de l’adaptation que France Culture en propose, j’ai retrouvé le même sentiment de fascination, de répulsion, d’incompréhension et de proximité avec les personnages. C’est un roman très étrange, je ne me souvenais pas que la résolution des crimes intervenait si tôt et qu’une si large place était faite à la vie de Langlois après cette enquête, qui mérite d’être lu et relu. D’aucun le considèrent comme le chef-d’œuvre de Giono, c’est un peu étrange car il me semble être vraiment à part dans son œuvre, très singulier.
Voilà une note de lecture bien vide, mais parce qu’elle reflète ma perplexité fascinée face à cette œuvre. Mais une note de lecture qui voudrait donner envie de découvrir cette œuvre étrange si ce n’est pas déjà fait.
1 stem raton-liseur | Aug 6, 2020 |
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This is the first English-language translation of Jean Giono's 1947 masterpiece, Un Roi Sans Divertissement, A King Without Diversion , which takes its title from Pascal's famous remark that "a man without diversions is a man with misery to spare." Giono's novel is an existential detective story set in a snowbound mountain village in the mid-nineteenth century. Deep in winter, inhabitants of the village begin mysteriously to disappear, and Langlois is sent to investigate. A manhunt begins and Langlois brings the case to what appears to be a successful conclusion. Some years later, again in winter, Langlois returns to the village, now having been promoted to the position of captain of the brigade that protects the inhabitants and their property from wolves. Langlois is a charismatic and enigmatic kingly figure who fascinates the villagers he has been sent to protect, and yet he feels set apart from them and from himself, and as he pursues the wolf who is preying on the village, he identifies more and more with the murderer who had been his earlier target. The splendid, tormented Langlois is very much at the center of the novel, but he is surrounded by a full cast of remarkable characters. There is Sausage, the "saucy" and "sassy" cafe owner; Fre de ric II, the brave sawmill owner who tracks the killer; Ravanel Georges, an almost-victim of the murderer; the potbellied Royal Prosecutor with his profound knowledge of "men's souls"; the murdered Marie Chazottes and her "peppery blood"; and an exotic woman from the "very high" places in Mexico who befriends Langlois and Sausage. In Alyson Waters's outstanding translation the many voices in this wonderfully inventive and diverting novel by one of the most perennially popular of modern French writers come to brilliant life in English.

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