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| Le Grand Meaulnes (Penguin Modern Classics) | 
 enlarge | Author: Henri Alain-fournier
Creator: F. Davison
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Category: Book
Buy Used: £11.22
Avg. Customer Rating:  13 reviews
Sales Rank: 286330
Media: Paperback
Edition: New edition
Pages: 208
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 5.1 x 0.7
ISBN: 0141182725
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780141182728
ASIN: 0141182725
Publication Date: February 24, 2000
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: **SHIPPED FROM UK** We believe you will be completely satisfied with our quick and reliable service. All orders are dispatched as swiftly as possible! Buy with confidence!
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| Customer Reviews:
 Bittersweet, melancholic, longing for what is past and gone. November 6, 2006
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
I wasn't quite sure about this novel for the first three or four chapters and even up to the last third harboured one or two doubts about what Fournier was trying to achieve. The odd scene even struck me as faintly ludicrous. But gradually, allowing myself to recall how adolescents think and feel and act, matters grew clearer: I was won over and finally finished the book with a profound sense of loss and sadness. I won't discuss the plot (sketched it might sound trite!) but, instead, will draw attention to the atmosphere of regret that pervades the work. Fournier conveys this, not simply by what is said and thought, felt by the protagonists, but by his use of descriptuions of nature, the passing seasons, his vivid depictions of weather(note how often it rains!). Love is found and lost, real happiness is a moment in time never to be recaptured. This is a book for those on the verge of adulthood and for those, like me, old enough to look back on what was. Beautiful, slow, anguished, haunting. I shall read it again, and again.
 In search of a moment of happiness January 27, 2004
19 out of 21 found this review helpful
This semi-autobiographical novel by the Frenchman, Fournier, is a beautiful tale of childhood, friendship, loyalty and love. It's a tale to be read slowly, in quiet moments, when your own mind can take you back to a brief happy memory of childhood. For this is a story that has the power to do just that. The characters of Seurel and Meaulnes, in particular, are magnificently drawn in this novel and you will remember them and all the characters for years and years after putting the book down. I have read this book at least 8 times and I guarantee you will do the same.
 Le Grand Meaulnes; the eternal quest November 26, 2003
9 out of 17 found this review helpful
I first began reading this book as part of a school project and found the first ten chapters extremely dull and uneventful. I reluctantly carried on and with some surprise I suddenly became interested in this dissatisfied youth on his eternal quest for the magic and perfection of childhood. The book is narrated by Francois Seurel, an uninteresting and rather pathetic character who's influence on the book is minimal. Although the book is narrated by Francois it is all about Augustin Meaulnes (who to Francois appears perfect) and his search for perfection which he thinks he has found in the person of Yvonne De Galais. The book goes on to address many important issues still relevant today, such as friendship, love and the unobtainable. If you have a chance to read this book, pay particular attention to chapters 11-17 where the book reaches a state perfection which Meaules attemps to recapture throughout the rest of the novel. The second and third parts of the novel are extremely hard hitting and show that childhood is a once in a lifetime opportunity and those of us who refuse to grow up will never find what they are looking for. Those of you who have any desire to rekindle the magic of childhood, read this book, you will not be disappointed.
In search of lost time October 31, 2003
12 out of 14 found this review helpful
This is a lyrical, elegiac and beautifully written meditation on the fragile world that exists between childhood and adulthood. The "lost domain" of the book--discovered by the protagonist of the story Augustin Meaulnes and the setting for his encounter with Yvonne--is a haunting lament for lost youth. It is right up there with Catcher in the Rye, but richer. Like Proust, Alain-Fournier is interested in the past, and how we delude ourselves by thinking we can recreate it.I don't know if Freud read Alain-Fournier, but he would have been intrigued by the lost domain; it is hard not to read it as some kind of inner sanctum, where anything is possible, and somewhere we have all been at some point our lives. Yet in spite of Meaulnes's youthful exuberance, and the wistful descriptions of country life, this is a deeply tragic book saturated by the idea of death. It is not only Meaulnes heroic (and often infuriating) quest in the book that ends with a death. The book itself was published in 1913, when Alain-Fournier was only 27. A year later, one month shy of his 28th birthday and only a month after joining the army, he was killed in the trenches defending his own "domain", his beloved France. His body remained unidentified until 1991 and is buried in the war cemetery in Saint Remy La Colonne. It is therefore hard not to place the book alongside Owen and Sassoon and the War poets, though Fournier died before he could have read any of the war poems. This book is also a powerful reminder of the devastating consequences of being true to an oath, the kind of blind loyalty that childhood is so often all about.
A novel of great sadness June 2, 2003
3 out of 9 found this review helpful
I read this with a book group and would never have found it myself. I was, however, pleased to have been brought in contact with it as once I started it, I was hooked to carry on. Set in the late 19th century but could have been written any time as its themes are the modern preoccupations of love and loss and struggle and adventure.
I followed the characters on their adventures and though I hoped it would end well, I think there was a sense of foreboding as you read that leads you not to expect a fairytale end. We are just with these characters for a short time and life is long.
Definitely to be recommended for anyone who wants to read something a bit different.
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