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Le Grand Meaulnes

by Alain-Fournier, Frank Davison (Translation)

3.8 of 5 stars 3.80 · rating details · 2,536 ratings · 220 reviews

When Meaulnes first arrives in Sologne, everyone is captivated by his good looks, daring, and charisma. But when he attends a strange party at a mysterious house with a beautiful girl hidden inside, he is changed forever. This evocative novel has at its center both a Peter Pan in provincial France-a kid who refuses to grow up-and a Parsifal, pursuing his love to the ends o...more

Paperback, 208 pages

Published July 1st 1994 by Penguin Classics (first published 1912)

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Sep 21, 2010 Esteban del Mal rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: people who wonder what Cirque du Soleil would sound like if they talked

Shelves: fiction, novel, night-of-the-living-unread, donated

Dear Henri Alain-Fournier,

Some people claim you had great talent as a novelist. Many more would claim I don't. Is it fair that you died in World War I while I live, free to write this review and feeling like I'm having a bad morning because I didn't have all the usual ingredients for my breakfast shake? Your remains weren't identified until 1991, true, but do you know that without yogurt, steel cut oatmeal, goji berries and banana congeal like pond scum when blended with almond milk? I guess in...more Dear Henri Alain-Fournier,

Some people claim you had great talent as a novelist. Many more would claim I don't. Is it fair that you died in World War I while I live, free to write this review and feeling like I'm having a bad morning because I didn't have all the usual ingredients for my breakfast shake? Your remains weren't identified until 1991, true, but do you know that without yogurt, steel cut oatmeal, goji berries and banana congeal like pond scum when blended with almond milk? I guess in a way translated works of fiction are like that, lacking an ingredient. Not really fair of me to judge you then, is it? And on top of that, I read somewhere that the Robin Buss translation I have isn't the best.

I don't know. Maybe I've been prejudiced against anything French because there's been a creepy mime wandering around the farmers' market on Saturdays. With the summer heat, its face make-up starts to melt and peel and it scares my kid and me. Or maybe, having discovered Woody Allen before James Dean, it's because I'm sentimental for my own sort of coming-of-age story. But the truth is, I found your novel sappy. Sappy to the nth degree.

"And that evening, sobbing, he asked Mademoiselle de Galais for her hand in marriage."

Barf.

Some folks describe it as dream-like. Well, I'll meet them halfway and say that it is conducive to a dream-like state, in as much as I found myself wanting to fall asleep as I read it. God! Germany probably invaded France so often to keep from nodding off. Can you blame them? They had all those big philosophical treatises to write, but then kept getting distracted by the latest Twilight prequel. And they would've even read it in the original French because all you Continentals speak five languages!

I tried to make excuses for you, thinking, "Look at it this way: it's a parable for post-colonial France. They were just coming off that Napoleonic high and had to simultaneously deal with the onset of modernity. It's a simple case of British/penis envy." But even my credulity can only stretch so far.

Goodbye, Alain-Fournier. Sorry your life was cut short by one of history's celebrated mistakes. Maybe this book will mean something to somebody else. It's going to have the opportunity, because I'm donating it to my library.(less)

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Jul 21, 2011 K.D. Oliveros rated it 3 of 5 stars

Recommended to K.D. by: 501 Must Read Books

Shelves: 501, french, ya, classics

Alain-Fournier was the pseudonym of Henri Alban-Fournier (1886-1914), a French author and soldier. Le Grand Meaulnes (1913) was his only novel, filmed twice and is now considered one of the greatest works of French literature. He was a friend to Andre Gide (1869-1951) who wrote The Fruits of the Earth (1897), Strait is the Gate (1909), The Counterfeiters (1927) among many others. Alain-Fournier started work on a second novel Colombe Blanchet in 1914. However, that same year, he joined the army a...more

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Jul 13, 2009 Helynne rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Although Le Grand Meaulnes (sometimes translated as The Wanderer or The Lost Estate) was written in 1913, which was more in the decadent or modernism era, this lovely, mysterious novel falls definitely into the category of late Romanticism. Just one year after publishing his one and only novel, young Henri Alain-Fournier was killed in a World War I battle at Epargnes in 1914. The literary world is so much the poorer for his loss as well as for the loss of many more novels he surely would have w...more Although Le Grand Meaulnes (sometimes translated as The Wanderer or The Lost Estate) was written in 1913, which was more in the decadent or modernism era, this lovely, mysterious novel falls definitely into the category of late Romanticism. Just one year after publishing his one and only novel, young Henri Alain-Fournier was killed in a World War I battle at Epargnes in 1914. The literary world is so much the poorer for his loss as well as for the loss of many more novels he surely would have written.
The title character in Le Grand Meaulnes is a 17-year-old student, Augustin Meaulnes, who arrives at a boys' school in rural France, about 1910. Meaulnes is worldly and charismatic, and soon has all the boys wanting to be his friend. The narrator of the story is Meanlnes's best friend Francois Seurel, a sickly 15-year-old boy upon whom Meaulnes seems to have a healing effect. Francois carefully chronicles all the elated and brooding emotions of his moody new friend. One day, Meaulnes takes a cart and horse from the school and disappears for three days without explanation. When he returns, Meaulnes seems dazed and forlorn. He relates to Francois how he accidentally stumbled upon a beautiful old house--what he will later call "the lost domain" --in the middle of a forest. Meaulnes sneaked into an engagement party that was going on there. The party had a dreamy, surrealistic feel to it until Meaulnes heard from the sad, young groom that the wedding was off because the fiancee fled. Meaulnes also met and talked to beautiful Yvonne de Galais, the sister of the would-be groom. But before he could really get to know her, she disappeared and he had to stumble his way back to the school. The original 1960s film version of this novel is a beautiful tribute to the spirit of Alain-Fournier's story. As Meaulnes tells in flashback his experience at the lost domaine, the footage is shot in a blurred style, like a Monet painting, to indicate his dreaminess and confusion during his disoriented and ethereal state. (I have also read that the 2006 film version is disappointing; too bad!) The events that subsequently continue to bring together and pull apart Meanlnes, Yvonne, Franz, and his would-be bride Valentine, and various "bohemian" youth of the region continue in Francois's narrative for the next three years until the story comes to its melancholic conclusion. This is beautiful piece of writing in terms of coming-of-age, adolescent angst, and the typical Romantic search for the unattainable ideal. Highly recommended.(less)

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Mar 02, 2008 Nancy Oakes rated it 5 of 5 stars

One of the few books to which I have given 5 stars in a long while, Le Grand Meaulnes is likely one of the best books I've read in a very, very long time. Set in France of last century, the story is narrated by one Francois Seurel, the son of the local schoolmaster. Seurel's father takes in a new boy, Augustin Meaulnes, who is also known as "le grand Meaulnes." He's the kid in every group who is fearless and who is looked up to by all of the other kids, and he and Francois become very close frie...more

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May 10, 2009 James rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, french-lit

A unique and dream-like book about youthful ardour and longing. The story of Meaulnes and his search for his lost love is unforgettable. Impulsive, reckless and heroic, Meaulnes embodies both romanticism and a search for the elusiveness of the world between childhood and adulthood. I found this book both enjoyable and thought-provoking in its exceptional depiction of romantic feeling. The result was a haunting ability to remain in my memory with a sort of nostalgia for the reading that I have ra...more

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Feb 26, 2013 Realini rated it 5 of 5 stars

Le Grande Meaulnes, by Alain –Fournier

I loved this book, which will make me pay more attention to The Le Monde top of 100 best novels…up to know I placed emphasis on the Anglo-Saxon critics’ lists of The Guardian and TIME…

Le Grande Meaulnes is “one of France’s most popular novels…much loved yet little read”
F. Scott Fitzgerald borrowed its title for The Great Gatsby (some think even the characters).

All the life of the author was influenced, moved round a single afternoon, when he met Yvonne, whic...more

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May 15, 2013 Spike Gomes rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The single solitary novel published by the author before dying in the trenches of WWI, Le Grand Meaulnes is a novel that the writer of the introduction compares to Catcher in the Rye, with its focus on the loss of youth. I certainly enjoyed it more than Salinger's novel, as the dreamy bucolic imagistic style is more to my taste than that of an urban proto-emo. Still I cannot rate it more than 3.5 stars.

The rating is more a reflection on the fact that I'm no longer a dreamy romantic teenager drun...more

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Laurie Tomchak I think part of the trouble is the title. Both "Le Grand Meaulnes" and "The Lost Estate" are mysterious, but not in a good way. Before I read it, I wo...more
May 16, 2013 04:55am

Spike Gomes I find Radiguet a bit better in characterization and tone, and his second novel ages better than his first. Alain-Fournier is definitely much better i...more
May 16, 2013 10:18pm

Laurie Tomchak I've tried to resist the book group's desire to read things they liked when they were young. I took a stand against zen and the art of motorcycle main...more
May 16, 2013 11:26pm

Apr 21, 2013 Manaal Hachimi rated it 4 of 5 stars

Le Grand Meaulnes raconte l'histoire d'un premier amour , celui qui ne se concrétisera jamais et dont on garde un souvenir ébloui .
C'est un livre au charme désuet , celui d'une époque qui n'existe plus , un roman très romantique , il y a dans ce livre , une atmosphère particulière qui nous fait pénétrer dans un monde merveilleux , magique , c'est ça la force du roman , il nous emmène au pays des rêves , on est un peu comme dans un état d'hypnose pendant la lecture .
Moi personnellement , jen gard...more

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Mar 02, 2013 Stevedutch rated it 5 of 5 stars

At the start of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca the narrator reminds us that ‘we can never go back again’ as, in her dream, she wanders the winding, overgrown path to Manderley. Likewise, George Webber, Thomas Wolfe’s ‘hero’ reluctantly concludes, that ‘you can’t go home again’ at the end of his novel of the same name. And this, in essence, is the theme that haunts this elegiac tale of childhood lost and with it the innocence that often, in adulthood, we wish was ours still to claim.

The story of Aug...more

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Feb 19, 2013 Henk rated it 5 of 5 stars

Well, I read this classic partly in French and partly in a Dutch translation (by Mario Molegraaf). How can someone become so happy by reading such a sad book? The whole story is a reference to the lost Paradise. And in this book the paradise is not refound. But there is so much love and friendship here. Although there is hardly any awareness of God in this book you see how beautiful people are created. For myself this book encouraged me to long for the Paradise in the shape of the new Jerusalem,...more

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Feb 09, 2013 Michael rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I had not read this mythical book before. I liked it on the whole but was disappointed with some aspects of the writing.

(view spoiler)...more I had not read this mythical book before. I liked it on the whole but was disappointed with some aspects of the writing.

(view spoiler)[My favorite part is the beginning of the novel, i.e. the moments of childhood and the encounter with Meaulnes (this whole part is superb, a model of seemingly simple, yet virtuoso writing) and the party at the lost domain (which, as noted by Péju in his preface to the Gallimard edition, manages to take a real event but to give it the exquisite appearance of a dream).

That said, I am bothered by one aspect of the writing in particular. Some might call it a "realism" problem, but that is not what I would call it, because I think it is a "truth" problem that runs deeper than realism (I am referring to Stephen King's admonition: "write about anything you like, as long as it is true").

My problem is that all characters are endowed with an infallible (and annoying, as instances accumulate) ability to devine things when it is needed (for instance when the narrator and Delouche catch sight of Frantz on the day of the wedding and understand he will try to call Meaulnes away from his bride) and to not see them when it is needed (for instance Meaulnes not being able to recognize Frantz and Ganache at Sainte-Agathe until it is required by the plot). In other words, even as the heart of the novel has to do precisely with what one knows and what one has to leave to the powers of imagination or patience, there is in the narration a kind of "betrayal" which may get on your nerves.

This feeling of betrayal (i.e. the writing not being good enough) is also palpable in some of the scenes told via a third party, which are too real and personal to be believable (including parts of the party at the lost domain, based on Meaulne's account to the narrator, where some feelings "feel" too personal to be shared so straightforwardly). The empathy of the narrator is indeed a true object of the novel, but there is no indication that the narrator might be filling in the blanks left by Meaulnes. In other words, an all-important layer of added depth which could (perhaps should) have run through the novel is absent, because knowledge is treated in such a black-and-white way (see my remarks in the last paragraph) that there is no room for such filling-in, guessing, or at least qualification. (hide spoiler)]

Thus, though much of the telling relies on third parties, as in Joseph Conrad's novels from about the same period, one can reproach Alain-Fournier with not taking full ownership, not going to the bottom of the narrative apparatus he has chosen.(less)

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Jan 24, 2013 Smcleish rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: owned

Originally published on my blog here in September 2002.

The Catcher in the Rye has been an important novel in the lives of many of its readers, helping to re-define ideas of what teenagers are like in the English-speaking world. To a French person a generation or so earlier, Le Grand Meaulnes, which is also about growing up, might well have had a similar effect. A further similarity between Alain-Fournier and J.D. Salinger is that the one novel amounts to virtually their entire output, though in...more Originally published on my blog here in September 2002.

The Catcher in the Rye has been an important novel in the lives of many of its readers, helping to re-define ideas of what teenagers are like in the English-speaking world. To a French person a generation or so earlier, Le Grand Meaulnes, which is also about growing up, might well have had a similar effect. A further similarity between Alain-Fournier and J.D. Salinger is that the one novel amounts to virtually their entire output, though in the case of the French author this was because of his tragic early death on the Western Front rather than the reclusiveness of Salinger's later years.

The narrator of the novel is Francois Seurel, the son of a schoolmaster. He is approaching the end of his education when a new pupil arrives at the school. Augustin Meaulnes quickly becomes the leader of the boys in their wildest escapades in the countryside around the school. On one of these adventures Meaulnes becomes lost and ends up at a ruined country estate which is being prepared for a bizarre wedding. (This is why a filmed version of the novel was entitled The Lost Domain.) There he meets a young woman and falls in love, but once he returns to the outside world he is unable to find the chateau again, even though he becomes obsessed with the search.

There are three things which mark Le Grand Meaulnes out as a classic. The first is its evocation of childhood, particularly the magical nature of some of our experience in that period which often produces nostalgic feelings in later life. The second is in the symbolic nature of the domain itself, which is really the same thing: it stands for that which is left behind on entering adulthood, something which we can never find again no matter how hard we search. The third reason, also connected, is the relationship between Seurel and Meaulnes. This is one of idealistic hero worship on Seurel's part; there aren't quite homoerotic overtones, but it comes close (and of couse, as narrator, Seurel would be able to censor the story as he chooses). It is something typical of adolescence; though one would usually expect one of them to be younger than the other, here Seurel is given a slight infirmity which makes his hero worship of a contemporary more credible.

Le Grand Meaulnes has rather suffered for non-French readers for two reasons. Alain Fournier's untimely death meant that he didn't generate the international reputation during his lifetime that he might well have done; it is easy enough to believe that he might have produced work equalling the front rank of twentieth century French novelists. The other problem is that two key phrases are difficult (if not impossible) to translate. One is crucially the title, because "grand" is being used to carry far more than its dictionary translations, "big" or "great". The choice made here is to keep the French title (also marred for English speakers because the character's name is nearly phonetically equivalent to "moan"); this can only be off-putting. Other titles which have been used are The Wanderer, which is rather vague, and The Lost Domain, which introduces the other untranslatable phrase. This is "domain", used of the run down chateau and (crucially) the world it evokes in itself and as a symbol. The problem is again the baggage which goes with the word; the literal equivalent "country estate" has different connotations in English. For Alain-Fournier, it also designates an unreal world beside our own, like that Faerie of George MacDonald. In this domain the normal rules do not quite apply; once experienced, it is never forgotten, remaining an influence for ever. This is what Alain-Fournier has to say about childhood, and he uses the domain as a symbol to do so.

Salinger provided Holden Caulfield with a mission - to proclaim that adults are not always right, that teacher does not always know best. Alain-Fournier's characters are gentler, less iconoclastic. Even though they do things against the wishes of adults, the novel is from a world long before the kind of cynical teenage rebellion documented by Salinger. Since Salinger's picture of the teenager has gone on to become so dominant in modern culture, Le Grand Meaulnes has something of the air of a period piece. Yet as an evocation of the magic of adolescence, it remains an unsurpassed classic.(less)

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Dec 17, 2012 Adrian rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

There is a time for every book. This one I read it to late, way to late, but somehow it managed to captivate me so much that I felt I traveled back in time, at a stage of my life where everything was possible, where I used to create an image of a girl and fell deeply in love with it, and project that image on every desirable girl that I would meet in my way.

Augustin Meaulnes was a lucky guy: the context in which he meet he's love doesn't need any kind of idealization. The mysterious, magic world...more

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Dec 11, 2012 Cleo rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: owned-books, classics

I was really looking forward to this one and...I was disappointed. It was almost boring, but not quite. There was something of the French charm and "fantasie" about it. Hold on. Let me backtrack. What is Le Grand Meaulnes about? Well, it's about this boy named Auguste Meaulnes who arrives at the small village of Sologne, and captivates everyone. But he vanishes for a few days and comes back with stories of a strange party in a mysterious house and a beautiful girl that met there. "....Meaulnes h...more I was really looking forward to this one and...I was disappointed. It was almost boring, but not quite. There was something of the French charm and "fantasie" about it. Hold on. Let me backtrack. What is Le Grand Meaulnes about? Well, it's about this boy named Auguste Meaulnes who arrives at the small village of Sologne, and captivates everyone. But he vanishes for a few days and comes back with stories of a strange party in a mysterious house and a beautiful girl that met there. "....Meaulnes has been changed forever. In his restless search for his Lost Estate and the happiness he found there, Meaulnes, observed by his loyal friend Francois, may risk losing everything he ever had. poised between youthful admiration and adult resignation, Alain-Fournier's compelling narrator carries the reader through this evocative and often unbearably moving portrayal of desperate friendship and vanished adolescence." Interesting sounding story, right? Penguin Classics translates (or rather, calls it) The Lost Estate (which is obviously not a literal translation of the original French title.) I did not find myself caring about the characters that much though, so it wasn't "deeply moving" at all. Some of the descriptions were vaguely interesting, but I didn't find it such a great book.

Also, from Alain-Fournier's description of the "lost estate", it doesn't sound so wonderful. I mean, if I was Meaulnes, I would want to find out more about the mysterious house, but "the happiness he found there?" To me (from the description of it), the house just sounded like a nice place where Meaulnes spent a few nights. To be sure, there is an air of the mysterious about it, but why should it have the potential to ruin his life? How can he have fallen in love with the girl after talking to her once?

In the end, I guess I just didn't find Le Grand Meaulnes that compelling. I understand that Meaulnes is in that state between childhood and adulthood...but really, who cares? Not me. I don't mean to say that I hated this one, just that it was missing something (for me.) I will admit though, that the second part of the book was much, much better than the first. I actually enjoyed the last fifty pages or so. Le Grand Meaulnes is an essential part of French literature though, and I'm glad that I had the experience of reading it.

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Nov 22, 2012 Bogna rated it 5 of 5 stars

I read "Le Grand Meaulnes" at school when I was ca 16, the book stood in its own category, the impression it left hard to describe. And then it disappeared - from my life, but strangely enough, also from public interest in Poland. I remembered it again after coming back home from Duino two years later, and wanted to get it, to go back, to decipher it better, but nobody I asked knew it. I kept looking in libraries, book-shops, in vain, not even on the internet for a long dozen of years did anythi...more I read "Le Grand Meaulnes" at school when I was ca 16, the book stood in its own category, the impression it left hard to describe. And then it disappeared - from my life, but strangely enough, also from public interest in Poland. I remembered it again after coming back home from Duino two years later, and wanted to get it, to go back, to decipher it better, but nobody I asked knew it. I kept looking in libraries, book-shops, in vain, not even on the internet for a long dozen of years did anything appear.

And then, I entered perchance into one of these book-exchange bazaars here in Warsaw a few years ago, and there it was: "Le Grand Meaulnes", by Alain-Fournier, waiting for me! A Polish edition from 1938, thick, yellow, and stamped all around by various libraries it had belonged to over the 70 years of its existence.

I was afraid to read it again, afraid of a disappointment and disenchantment. It took me nearly half a year to start. But my anxiety was needless, it got me even more enchanted - "Le Grand Meaulnes" has the capacity to grow with the reader.

The book's own fate seems to go along the mystery it presents, drawn slowly and with delicate sincerity by the Author. The tragedy of the main character, though painted in pastel colours, reveals in fact a different tragedy, quiet and even more pastel. Enough said.

A few months after I had read it, I turned on the Polish radio, Programme 2, and heard Iwona Smolka, a well known middle-aged literary critic, starting the programme she has every week with Tomasz Burek and Piotr Matywiecki, also critics and writers, more less thus: "the book we are going to discuss today is not just a classic novel that one has read at the age of 17 and was fascinated though one could not understand, this narrative stayed in memory and has been carried there until one needed to go back and live the adventure of the characters again, seeking to understand. And one does go back and the adventure revives". I trembled, and I was not mistaken.(less)

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Jun 08, 2012 David Rain rated it 5 of 5 stars

Alain-Fournier was the pseudonym of a French writer, real name Henri Alban, who died in the First World War at the age of twenty-seven. The narrator of this, his only novel, is a young boy, the son of a schoolmaster in provincial France in the late nineteenth century. The story begins when a new pupil comes to the school, the extraordinary Augustin Meaulnes. Taller than the other boys, stronger, more daring, Meaulnes seems destined for adventure, and adventure soon comes when he absconds from sc...more

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Mar 19, 2012 Tony rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction-mainstream

THE LOST ESTATE (Le Grand Meaulnes). (1912). Alain-Fournier. ****.
It turned out that this was my second reading of this novel. Over forty years ago, I read a book titled, “The Wanderer” by this author. When I found this copy I thought it was another book by him that I would likely enjoy. Come to find out, this book had several different titles ascribed to it depending on the whim of the translator – excused by his need to capture the essence of the book in the title. Here’s an example of where...more THE LOST ESTATE (Le Grand Meaulnes). (1912). Alain-Fournier. ****.
It turned out that this was my second reading of this novel. Over forty years ago, I read a book titled, “The Wanderer” by this author. When I found this copy I thought it was another book by him that I would likely enjoy. Come to find out, this book had several different titles ascribed to it depending on the whim of the translator – excused by his need to capture the essence of the book in the title. Here’s an example of where it pays to learn as much about an author as possible when reading his or her books. That way you would have surely learned that he only wrote the one book. Alain-Fournier, christened Henri Alban, was born in 1886, and was killed in action on the Meuse in 1914. The novel has been variously titled, “The Wanderer,” “The Lost Domain,” and “Big Meaulnes,” plus, of course, the current title. It was extremely popular in France when it was published, and was as iconic in its effects on French youth as, say, “Catcher in the Rye” was on American youths. It is much like a fusion of “Peter Pan,” with “The Secret Garden.” “...Meaulnes first arrives at the local school in Sologne...Everyone is captivated by his good looks, daring and charisma. But when he disappears for several days, and returns with tales of a strange party at a mysterious house and a beautiful girl hidden within it, Meaulnes has been changed for ever. In his restless search for his Lost Estate and the happiness he found there, Meaulnes, observed by his loyal friend Francois, may risk losing everything he eveer had.” The story is narrated by Francois, who joins up with Meaulnes to find this hidden source of happiness and is also transformed when they find it. I hate to say it, but the novel does not read as well the first time. This might very well be that I am forty years older than when I read it the first time. If you are a first-time reader, I recommend you try it.
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Sep 16, 2011 Mark rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

"Man, this book is so French." That's the recurring thought I had as I read The Lost Estate. It seems many critics over the years have responded to this book as a elegy on the loss (or, more specifically, the leaving behind) of childhood. This is entirely accurate, of course, but to me it seems even moreso a classic French meditation on sadness.

This is not to say that French authors have a lock on depressing books, but aside from the works of Alexandre Dumas and Stendhal, most of the other Frenc...more "Man, this book is so French." That's the recurring thought I had as I read The Lost Estate. It seems many critics over the years have responded to this book as a elegy on the loss (or, more specifically, the leaving behind) of childhood. This is entirely accurate, of course, but to me it seems even moreso a classic French meditation on sadness.

This is not to say that French authors have a lock on depressing books, but aside from the works of Alexandre Dumas and Stendhal, most of the other French novels I'm familiar with (e.g., Les Misérables, Candide, Madame Bovary, The Immoralist, The Stranger, Nausea, The Mystery Guest) are filled with despair, ennui, or some combination of the two.

Which is also not to say that I didn't enjoy The Lost Estate. On the contrary, it's beautifully written (or should I say translated, in this case by Robin Buss) and skilfully evokes that drained, empty feeling one gets when a certain thrilling childhood experience is revisited in adulthood, only to discover that the thrill is no longer present. But the sadness is there, in the book, almost from the beginning and, perhaps even more oddly, during Meaulnes's pivotal experience at the ethereal château de Galais. Perhaps it is because we hear Meaulnes's personal account of this lost estate (albeit through François's narration) only after he has already returned and is trying to find his way back to it that the story itself is suffused with sadness. But even as we read about the children playing in the lawns, the sumptuous feast, the lake outing, or Meaulnes's first glimpse of beautiful Yvonne at the piano, it's as if Meaulnes is despairing of his adventure even as he lives it.

This cloud over the proceedings is what led me to my second recurring thought while I was reading this book: "Why do the French have to be so gloomy?" Again, I can't really support this thought with empirical evidence so much as a general feeling about French novels, film (from Contempt to Of Gods and Men), and philosophy (Foucault and Derrida).

This gloom that so pervades the book led me to wonder why Meaulnes was so intent on returning to the estate and finding Yvonne. From what I could tell, his idealized vision of that place and the girl he found there seemed to crumble even before he was finished completing it. So then I thought to myself, Perhaps one must be French to truly appreciate Meaulnes's predicament.

I have a Russian colleague who contends that someone who isn't Russian can't truly understand a book like Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita . You may understand the plot, the characters, even the novel's themes, but there's something fundamentally Russian about the book that cannot be deciphered by a non-Russian. Perhaps this isn't true (after all, human experience is subjective and, as a Russian, he can't possibly know what it's like for a non-Russian to try to decipher The Master and Margarita), but it raises an interesting point. One might say that the point of literature is for a writer to convey a certain experience to a reader who has never had that experience; but are there some experiences, or modes of feeling, that cannot cross certain boundaries, despite the skill of the writer who attempts to cross them? I don't know. But I do feel as if I failed to understand something very important lurking within The Lost Estate. And perhaps the reason why I failed to understand it is because I'm just not French.(less)

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May 31, 2010 Justin Evans rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

This obviously slots into the 'either love it or hate it' category, and I wonder if the translator's to blame? I assume at least in part, since this is meant to be enchanting, but reads more like a science text-book. In part it might be the French/English divide, since you just can't get away with random tense changes in English- it comes off as confused or maddening; the endless ellipses and rhetorical questions and descriptive passages which for all I know are beautiful and haunting in French...more

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Sep 04, 2009 Brandon Will rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, ya-lit, classics

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. In this book summer is never like summer,
autumn sometimes feels like spring,
and love found is not contentment.

Meaulnes was born to run.
His bud Francois, the narrator, was born to watch.
And to love, obsess over (even though the object of his obsession is somewhat bland and it doesn't seem like a gay thing), and to continually clean up after this asshole's messes, because this Meaulnes asshole is always making messes out of everything.

And because of all of those things, Francois was ultimately bor...more

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Apr 04, 2012 Lisa rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

Is this an ironic title? Not sure what was so magnificent about Augustin Meaulnes. Let's see some of the magnificent thing this guy did shall we. Takes off from school which his mother is bordering him to go to, gets lost with a borrowed horse and buggy, crashes a party for three days, falls "in love" with a girl he met for like 30 seconds, then loses touch with her and pines for her for years, then he falls in love with the girl's brother's ex-fiancee but wait a minute he finds the first girl a...more

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Mar 31, 2012 MJ Nicholls rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: pernod-and-gauloises, novels, penguin-classics

Le Grand Meaulnes is supposed to be untranslatable, and this translation by French classics legend Robin Buss doesn’t convince me otherwise. The novel hinges upon the titular Meaulnes being such a charming force of character in a lower-class school, his name echoes down the ages and his antics and adventures make him a much-beloved geezer in the province. Doesn’t quite work. But the narrator François is certainly smitten and describes Meaulnes’s first love in fits of florid descriptive prose wor...more

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May 13, 2013 Molood rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

اون چيزي كه در كتاب فروشي توجه ام رو به اين كتاب جلب كرد طرح روي جلد زيبا و خلاقانه ي اون بود و اون چيزي كه منو ترغيب به خريد اين كتاب كرد ديدن اسم مهدي سحابي به عنوان مترجم كتاب بود!
اين كتاب نمونه ي تمام عياري از ادبيات كلاسيك فرانسه است.
مون بزرگ كتابي نيست كه شما رو به فكر واداره ، كتابي نيست كه مفاهيم مهم زندگي رو در ذهن شما به چالش بكشه و ايده هاي جديدي در اين باره بهتون بده! مون بزرگ فقط يك داستان است! ولي يك داستان تمام عيار به معناي واقعي كلمه! پس خوندن اين كتاب رو صرفا به علاقمندان به دا...more اون چيزي كه در كتاب فروشي توجه ام رو به اين كتاب جلب كرد طرح روي جلد زيبا و خلاقانه ي اون بود و اون چيزي كه منو ترغيب به خريد اين كتاب كرد ديدن اسم مهدي سحابي به عنوان مترجم كتاب بود!
اين كتاب نمونه ي تمام عياري از ادبيات كلاسيك فرانسه است.
مون بزرگ كتابي نيست كه شما رو به فكر واداره ، كتابي نيست كه مفاهيم مهم زندگي رو در ذهن شما به چالش بكشه و ايده هاي جديدي در اين باره بهتون بده! مون بزرگ فقط يك داستان است! ولي يك داستان تمام عيار به معناي واقعي كلمه! پس خوندن اين كتاب رو صرفا به علاقمندان به داستان و داستان خواني توصيه مي كنم ، كساني كه دوست دارن چند صباحي ذهنشون از روزمرگي هاي زندگيِ خودشون دور بشه و با شخصيت ها و ماجراهاي اين داستان زيبا همراه بشه!
قدرت قلم نويسنده قابل ستايش است،داستان پردازي فوق العاده است و تا صفحات آخر هنوز گره هاي ذهني باز نشده اي براي خواننده وجود دارد كه به هيچ وجه حتي ذره اي كليشه اي نيستن تا بشه اونها رو با حدس و گمان به راحتي باز كرد و پيش بيني كرد ؛ پس خواننده پابه پاي داستان با انگيزه تا آخر جلو ميرود!
توصيفات اين كتاب و به طور كلي نثر آن به حدي جذاب و شيرين و دلنشين است كه خيلي از صفحات و جملات رو ميشه بارها خوند و باز هم لذت برد كه البته اين تا حد زيادي مديون ترجمه ي مهدي سحابي عزيز است كه با تبحري كه فقط مخصوص خود اوست كه توانسته اين زيبايي و قدرت قلم نويسنده را به بهترين نحو به فارسي برگرداند!
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Jun 16, 2012 Natalie rated it 5 of 5 stars

Oh, this book. Where do I even start? It's known to most English speakers as "The Lost Estate" or "The Wanderer", but actually translates to "The Great Meaulnes". From what I understand, you either love this novel or hate it. It is one of the few books I've given 5 stars to, but it deserves each one as I absolutely adore it.

It is told by a young (and maturing) Francois Seurel about a childhood friend (Meaulnes) who turned out to have one of the biggest impacts on his life. First love, coming of...more

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Feb 20, 2013 Kim rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I loved the adventure Francois and the Great Meaulnes has with other school friends, and I was intrigued in reading the drama on how Meaunles' complicated romance jeopardizes his friendship. The mysterious behaviors of Meaunles slowly veils throughout the novel and great relief and pleasure came for me at the last chapters of the book, which was a unique feeling that I had felt for a very long time. It was an ending that I did not hope for, but it was too beautifully written that I fell in love...more

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Jan 29, 2013 Clare rated it 4 of 5 stars

I first heard this story dramatised as a radio play and came to the novel only recently. Whilst I had found the original dramatisation overblown and melodramatic I found myself deeply enjoying Fournier's work. My translation seemed mostly sympathetic with some interesting footnotes on the tenor of the original french.

On one level the novel has a certain magical quality - particularly in it's descriptions of the "domain" and party as discovered by le Grande Meaulnes. There is a lyrical, enchanted...more

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Jul 16, 2010 Moira Russell marked it as amazon-wishlist · review of another edition

'This novel--the only ever written by the author, who died on a French battlefield in 1914--reminds one of The Magus for good reason. Fowles himself has stated that he wrote The Magus "very much under the influence" of The Lost Domain. This was Fowles' favorite book growing up, and the parallels between the two books are obvious. The 1986 edition includes an afterword by Fowles.' http://www.fowlesbooks.com/novels.htm Okay, must have.

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Jun 07, 2012 W.H. Johnson rated it 4 of 5 stars

I wish that I could arrive at a satisfactory – or satisfying – conclusion about this great classic of French literature. I wish that I could say that it bowled me over for it contains certain absolutely peerless qualities. For anyone wishing to absorb the essence of rural France in the years before the First World War this is the book to turn to, this is where we are introduced to that narrow peasant world with its little schools, its impoverished cottages, its decaying manor houses and the isol...more I wish that I could arrive at a satisfactory – or satisfying – conclusion about this great classic of French literature. I wish that I could say that it bowled me over for it contains certain absolutely peerless qualities. For anyone wishing to absorb the essence of rural France in the years before the First World War this is the book to turn to, this is where we are introduced to that narrow peasant world with its little schools, its impoverished cottages, its decaying manor houses and the isolation of a land where neighbouring villages are seen as distant, foreign territories.

Reading Le Grand Meaulnes, it is almost as though one were being taken into a picture gallery, full of the most detailed yet shadowy oil canvases side by side with the most exquisite miniatures. There are rooms with dark corners, where pots and pans reflect the light from narrow windows. There are mysterious landscapes, just not quite clear, just obscured by mists or fogs or encroaching darkness. Yet the detail is never less than astonishing. The book reads beautifully.

What a strange book this is, suffused with melancholy and a sense of unease and loss. The whole atmosphere of even the most joyful occasions is overshadowed by feelings of regret and hints that happiness is elusive and impermanent. The reader becomes aware as the tale progresses that there never can be contentment for its main character, the restless Augustin Meaulnes, a young man doomed from adolescence, to wander, destined to lose the woman he loves. This is the romantic hero writ large, right to the last page burdened and alone.

Reluctantly I conclude that the story, the plot-line, its construction, is in itself less than satisfying. Perhaps the old cynic in me cannot quite be convinced any more by tragic heroes. Yet – and this is the problem that I have – the great descriptive qualities on show here evoke atmosphere so brilliantly and tell me more of a period and a place than perhaps whole volumes might do. What a difficulty this reviewer finds himself in: perhaps it is he rather than the author who has failed.

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Dec 11, 2010 Snehal Bhagat rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This was a trying exercise; the central theme - essentially, that childhood may be transient but immaturity can be forever, is not unworthy of elaboration, but the execution is poor. The main character is under-developed, the gender roles are an illustration in stereotyping, the ideals espoused are cloyingly quaint and the rapid shifts in mood and tone are unsettling.

There isn't much by way of literary merit, at least not in the translated version, and the significance lies elsewhere; written ju...more

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Mar 24, 2013 Renee Kujawski rated it 1 of 5 stars

I wanted to like this book; I tried to read it...but - put it down half-way through. The premise was certainly one that always attracts me but I have read so many other better books with the same premise...Brideshead Revisited is my ultimate "lost youth" book, I think. For French fiction I prefer Zola.

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About Alain-Fournier

Alain-Fournier was the pseudonym of Henri-Alban Fournier (October 3, 1886 – September 22, 1914[1]), a French author and soldier. He was the author of a single novel, Le Grand Meaulnes (1913), which has been twice filmed and is considered a classic of French literature. Alain-Fournier was born in La Chapelle-d'Angillon, in the Cher département, in central France, the son of a school teacher. He stu...more Alain-Fournier was the pseudonym of Henri-Alban Fournier (October 3, 1886 – September 22, 1914[1]), a French author and soldier. He was the author of a single novel, Le Grand Meaulnes (1913), which has been twice filmed and is considered a classic of French literature. Alain-Fournier was born in La Chapelle-d'Angillon, in the Cher département, in central France, the son of a school teacher. He studied at the Lycée Lakanal in Sceaux, Hauts-de-Seine, near Paris, where he prepared for the entrance examination to the École Normale Supérieure, but without success. He then studied at the merchant marine school in Brest. At the Lycée Lakanal he met Jacques Rivière, and the two became close friends. In 1909, Rivière married Alain-Fournier's younger sister Isabelle. He interrupted his studies in 1907 and from 1908 to 1909 he performed his military service. At this time he published some essays, poems and stories which were later collected and re-published under the name Miracles. Throughout this period he was mulling over what would become his celebrated novel, Le Grand Meaulnes. On the first of June 1905, Ascension day, while he was talking a stroll along banks of the Seine he had met Yvonne de Quiévrecourt, with whom he became deeply enamoured. The two spoke, but he did not manage to win her favours. The following year on the same day he waited for her at the same place, but she did not appear. That night he told Rivière, "She did not come. And even if she had, she would not have been the same".[2] They did not meet again until eight years later, when she was married with two children. Yvonne de Quiévrecourt would become Yvonne de Galais in his novel. He returned to Paris in 1910 and became a literary critic, writing for the Paris-Journal. There he met André Gide and Paul Claudel. In 1912, he quit his job to become the personal assistant of the politician Casimir Perrier. Le Grand Meaulnes was finished in early 1913, and was first published in the Nouvelle Revue Française (from July to October 1913), and then as a book. Le Grand Meaulnes was nominated for, but did not win, the Prix Goncourt. It is available in English in a widely-admired 1959 translation by Frank Davison for Oxford University Press. In 1914, Alain-Fournier started work on a second novel, Colombe Blanchet, but this remained unfinished when he joined the army as a Lieutenant in August. He died fighting near Vaux-lès-Palameix[1] (Meuse) one month later, on the 22nd of September 1914. His body remained unidentified until 1991, at which time he was interred in the cemetery of Saint-Remy-la-Calonne. Most of the writing of Alain-Fournier was published posthumously: Miracles (a volume of poems and essays) in 1924, his correspondence with Jacques Rivière in 1926 and his letters to his family in 1930. His notes and sketches for Colombe Blanchet have also been published. From Wikipedia (less)

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Le Grand Meaulnes, or the Lost Domain, and Miracles

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Quotes from Le Grand Meaulnes

“Weeks went by, then months. I am speaking of a far-away time - a vanished happiness. It fell to me to befriend, to console with whatever words I could find, one who had been the fairy, the princess, the mysterious love-dream of our adolescence - and it fell to me because my companion had fled. Of that period ... what can I say? I've kept a single image of that time, and it is already fading: the image of a lovely face grown thin and of two eyes whose lids slowly droop as they glance at me, as if her gaze was unable to dwell on anything but an inner world.
” — 9 people liked it

“This evening, which I have tried to spirit away, is a strange burden to me. While time moves on, while the day will soon end and I already wish it gone, there are men who have entrusted all their hopes to it, all their love and their last efforts. There are dying men or others who are waiting for a debt to come due, who wish that tomorrow would never come. There are others for whom the day will break like a pang of remorse; and others who are tired, for whom the night will never be long enough to give them the rest that they need. And I - who have lost my day - what right do I have to wish that tomorrow comes?” — 8 people liked it

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