Reviews for Le Chateau de Ma Mere (Fortunio Series #2)

The average rating for Le Chateau de Ma Mere (Fortunio Series #2) based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-08-04 00:00:00 Robin Bridges I've read a lot of books. A lot of very, very good ones, too. But I have yet to encounter books that move me as much as Pagnol's. Sure, there might be some nostalgia involved in this feeling, but the fact remains that he has set the bar very, very high. "My Mother's Castle" is the second volume of Pagnol's childhood memoirs, and starts where "My Father's Glory" () left off: young Marcel has just discovered the beauty of the wild Provençal countryside, and after a glorious summer vacation spent with his family in a remote cabin, they go back to Marseille and school starts again. Basically, it's the end of the world for a young boy who wants nothing more than to run around the hills all day… But life goes on, and while he considers school an extreme inconvenience, he nevertheless works hard to make his father proud. The cabin is visited during holidays, but the children and Augustine long for the fresh air and beautiful vistas every week. When the opportunity comes up for the Pagnol family to visit the magical cabin every weekend, they are obviously delighted, but the weekly trek is long and tiring; this was before that entire area got gobbled up by suburban sprawl, and going from the city to the tiny village required a long tramway ride and a few hours walk… But who should happen to cross their path but one of Joseph's former pupil, who works for the Marseille canal's administration, and who gives them the key to a shortcut. Unfortunately, that shortcut is neither completely legal nor completely safe… The final section never, ever fails to shatter my heart into a million pieces and make me sob uncontrollably, and yet it is so exquisitely written that I'm not sure I'll ever be able to look away and skip it. It is also a brutal reversal: one minute, the Pagnol family is celebrating, and the next, he pulls the rug out of under you with a devastating few pages about grief. Pagnol loved his mother very, very deeply, and the entire book is an amazing homage to a wonderful, delicate woman, who was beloved by her family and by everyone she met. It's fair to say that anyone who reads this book will mourn Augustine. When I went to Marseille, I visited the Château de la Buzine, which is now a museum dedicated to Pagnol's life and work; I can't tell you how moved I was to walk along the little path that lines what was once the Marseille canal, to look up and see the castle, the same way he must have when he was just a little lad sneaking across the property - and much later when he realized he had just bought the very plot of land on which he had once watched the most dramatic moment of his childhood unfold. An incredibly moving book about childhood, growing up, family and friendship. I can't recommend it enough.

Review # 2 was written on 2011-12-06 00:00:00 Robert Mahon My favorite passage describes the death of the main character's best friend Lili: "En 1917, dans une noire foret du Nord, une balle en plein front avait tranche sa jeune vie, et il etait tombe sous la pluie, sur des touffes de plantes froides dont il ne savait pas les noms. . ." (214) Roughly: "In 1917, in a dark forest in the north, a bullet to the forehead cut short his young life, and he fell, in the rain, onto the leaves of cold plants whose names he did not know." Pagnol's lines give me a debilitating cocktail of heartbreak and ecstatic beauty. Lili who earlier in the narrative, wanders the hills, the sun on his face, with an intimate knowledge of every rock, plant, animal and weather pattern, falls in a dark of the unknown. Devastating, and beautiful.