The Frontenac Mystery

by François Mauriac, Gerard Hopkins (Translator)

In one of Mauriac's lesser known novels, he introduces the reader to The Frontenacs, small landed gentry of the Bordeaux region on France. This story explores the special, even sacramental, character of the family bond.

Genres: Fiction, French Literature, France, Classics, Roman, Novels, 20th Century

105 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1933

About the author

François Charles Mauriac was a French writer and a member of the Académie française. He was awarded the 1952 Nobel Prize in Literature "for the deep spiritual insight and the artistic intensity with which he has in his novels penetrated the drama of human life." Mauriac is acknowledged to be one of the greatest Roman Catholic writers of the 20th century.

Reviews

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read this one to counter the vicious attack L.-F. Céline makes on Mauriac in his novel Conversations with Professor Y, where the Nobel Laureate is ridiculed as appearing “like a mantis” with “no forehead at all” who made “insect-like gestures” . . . later accusing him of having a microcephalic head (“surely he had no frontal lobes”) and referring to his cancer as “magical”. Tsk tsk, Louis. Céline was the more innovative and interesting writer, Mauriac working in the mode of Turgenev, poeticising life among the French bourgeoisie in ways lyrical and frequently bland, except in his mostly captivating masterwork Thérèse. This novel concerns a traditional upper-middle-class family whose “mystery” refers to their elevated status as respected members of the sneering class whose reputation is nearly ruined forever when an uncle shacks up with a woman below his station. Mauriac isn’t satirical or critical of these characters or this society, merely a dewy-eyed chronicler of the passing of time, making him stylishly antiquated and his characters eminently slappable.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Spring prowled through the days of imitation Winter like someone whom one feels quite close but cannot see. Now and again he thought that he could smell it, only to find it gone again. It was cold. For one brief moment the afternoon light touched the trees with a soft finger, so that the pine-bark glowed like scales, its gummy wounds holding the gleam of sunset. Then suddenly everything went dull. The West wind drove the heavy clouds so low that they hung above the tree-tops, and drew from the ranks of sombre trunks a prolonged moaning"

Excuse the long quotation but apart from the fact that it is a lovely passage in my opinion it also captures a little of the atmosphere of the novel. Mauriac, as always, writes about the people he knows. Small landed gentry struggling to maintain their wealth in the swiftly changing world of the turn of the 20th century. A family, in this case, hamstrung with tradition and expectation and cornered by others assumptions.

Nothing dramatic happens, nothing on the grand scale and yet we see these men and women struggling to grow and live in the situation in which they find themselves which is, after all, the stuff of great novels.

Wealth there is but not enormous amounts for the support of five children as they grow to take their places in a small status driven society. Their uncle, kindly and generous but restrained by his inability to step forward in courage and take the peasant women he loves and lives with as his wife. What would the family say, how would society react? We stand 'Deus ex machina' and know that his nephews and nieces and even his widowed sister-in-law already know but they are equally hidebound by their desire to help him to continue to save face.

This obfuscation and hiding and half truths are ridiculous and sad and such a waste of a life half lived. Love of his partner is never as life enhancing as it could have been because love of the family and its past superseded. This serves not to open out into a future boldly strode towards but a half hearted limp. There is real love here and affection and admiration but no character ever reaches a point where they can speak from an unrestricted heart.

The family strive for love and care for each other but it is a novel of wasted opportunities. Where love, at its best, enlivens and transforms, the love here is understated and in shadow.

So to return to that quotation, it occurs early in the book and I was struck by it as I read it the first time. By the end of the novel it came as a brilliant metaphor of missed opportunities, hoped for but never fully realized. Glints and flashes of joy and deep affection glimpsed but never grasped and under all the solemn groan of societal expectation and duty's demands. Great read.

[John Anthony · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Frontenacs are an old landed gentry family from the Bordeaux region. On the death of Michel Frontenac, leaving a young widow and three boys, his dutiful brother Xavier commits himself to safeguarding his nephews' fortune and safeguarding the family honour/mystique/pride. Ironically, this guardian of the family honour has his own "mystery" which he must screen from public view whatever the cost. But he is a successful lawyer and well equipped to do so.

Mauriac's portrayal of his characters is something which has always attracted me to his books. However, apart from the very decent Jean Louis, none of them are particularly likeable here, or as well drawn perhaps as elsewhere in his work. It does bear his unmistakeable mark though - Frenchness - and all that goes to making it sensually so.

[Sara G · Rating 5 out of 5]

This blew my mind. Genuinely, I really enjoyed it. I thought it was going to be a fraught romance but it was a fascinating look into a family, a time, and a society.

And I adored the eldest brother, his steady and strong love for his family, his support for his remarkable little brother, his joy in his marriage and respect for his wife, his hard work and effort in service of his loved ones, the seriousness that he approached life with... he was just such a wonderful character and a wonderful man that we rarely see in fiction, even today. His role, I admit, even seemed to me reminiscent of the usual "eldest daughter" role, and so did his attitude and care he showed.

[Manuel Alfonseca · Rating 4 out of 5]

FRANÇAIS: L'histoire de deux générations d'une famille riche très spéciale, très fermée sur elle-même, à travers la vie d'un jeune poète qui se sent appelé par Dieu et ne veut pas entendre son appel.

ESPAÑOL: Historia de dos generaciones de una familia rica muy especial, muy cerrada en sí misma, a través de la vida de un joven poeta que se siente llamado por Dios y no quiere oír su llamada.

ENGLISH: The story of two generations of a rich, closed, special family, through the life of a young poet who feels called by God and does not want to hear his call.

[Elena · Rating 3 out of 5]

Casi todas las constantes de la narrativa de Mauriac se hallan presentes en esta novela: el retrato de una burguesía provinciana, la descripción detallada, casi idílica, de los paisajes de Las Landas, la presunción de que el individuo actúa movido por oscuras pasiones (la avaricia, la ambición, la sensualidad), contra las que no cabe otro remedio que la salvación por la gracia de Dios. Muchas veces he pensado qué tipo de escritor habría sido Mauriac si su pluma hubiera sabido independizarse de su profunda fé católica. Con todo, hay en la novela algunos pasajes notables, ensombrecidos de nihilismo, que muestran que Mauriac era capaz, después de todo, de trascender a sus propias convicciones y dotar a su Literatura de la universalidad que reclama el buen lector.

[Duncan · Rating 4 out of 5]

An evocative and moving book, though perhaps a little too sentimental in its affirmation of the spiritual resource that families can be. Its portrayal of the evanescent joys of childhood summer holidays is very powerful.

[BENJAMIN JONES · Rating 4 out of 5]

Je suis soulagé de voir, à chaque fois que je m'intéresse à la question, combien de livres il me reste à lire de François Mauriac. Ses thèmes sont explorés de façon si fine, si intime, que je ne me lasse pas de lui. Dans Le Mystère Frontenac, les relations au sein d'une fratrie pendant près de 10 ans (?), et entre les enfants, surtout le plus jeune, Yves, et sa mère, sont étalées dans le temps pour donner un roman qui a plusieurs époques et plusieurs lieux, si essentiels à l'intrigue. Les cimes de pins du sud-ouest, Paris, la jeunesse, le début de la vie adulte...

J'aime aussi que dans plusieurs romans de Mauriac, une petite tension qui ne dit jamais son nom mais que j'interprète librement comme la tension l'homosexuel-contre-le-monde-mais-plutôt-contre-lui-même-et-un-peu-Dieu-aussi, soit si bien imbriquée dans tout ce qu'il écrit.

Je pourrais parler longtemps de tous les détails, tous les aspects intéressants de ce livre mais bon je pense que ça ira pour le moment.

[rumaysa · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

[Kit · Rating 2 out of 5]

I know very little about François Mauriac, his life and his works. I picked up this book from one of those old booksellers by the Seine in Paris, just to fulfill the cliché of buying a French book from an old French dude wearing a beret, but the bookseller was kind and he recommended some books I’ve never heard of and even recommended some wrong things. For him, the book sales was just a business and this was his living, I don’t think he was a lover of literature. But he was kind, and that’s all that matters.

Mauriac, from the little that I have read of him, is not crash hot on the institution of the family. He views it with a suspicious eye, where personalities clash and the bonds of family is a restraint against one’s self-interest. The Frontenac Mystery, on the other hand, looks upon family matters a bit more kindly. The mystery of the Frontenac is how each family members relate to one another, despite their differences and still love one another (or at least tolerate one another). The Frontenac mystery is the mystery of every family.



And unless I miss something, I don’t think it is that deep of a mystery. The Frontenac Mystery is a record of a short family saga in less than 250 pages, from the time the children were children, to the time they are working adults and to some, to their deaths. And in all honesty, the problems with the book begins with the title, because I personally don’t think that the mystery is anymore profound than any filial bond. Is there a mystery on why a mother loves her son? Or why a brother loves another brother?

Enter the Frontenacs — a pretty banal family if you ask me

When we meet the Frontenacs, we see a family almost lost at sea: a widow trying to raise five children in a large estate, an uncle who comes to visit every fortnight and also responsible for handling the affairs of his nephews and nieces, but who may or may not be cracking into his dead brother’s wife, and the children messing around on their own, hanging out and having conversations about life under a massive oak tree.

The mother, Blanche, is concerned about her children’s future, and it seems that the uncle, Xavier, isn’t doing enough. The children, in their adolescence, have ambitions of their own. The oldest, Jean-Louis wanted to be an academic philosopher but he was seeded by the family to take over the family business. Yves, the second, had always wanted to be a poet. José is ephemeral, fanciful, but with a lot of promise (as any children are when they were children).

Through the passage of time, Jean-Louis becomes a very capable entrepreneur and manager, handling the family business with some difficulty, but this is only natural. Yves became a renowned poet, as he intended, but at the same time his personal life is a mess, tortured in unrequited love. José, well he got a bit too fanciful and spent all his money on a woman and other hedonistic tendencies. His debt soared. But he redeemed himself by taking up a career in the military. Did I mention that there were five children? Well, yes. There were two other daughters but we don’t hear shit from them.

Uncle Xavier got old and his health deteriorates, but his “kept” woman Josefa continued to nurse and love him, much, much better than Xavier’s snooty nephews and nieces. For those who got old would deteriorate would also die, either in their physical or mental wellbeing. Sounds just like life doesn’t it?

Am I missing the mystery?

The cover of the book, with its macabre mansion doused in generous amounts of black and grey promises a haunting murder mystery which may expose our human flaws. Instead, the mystery is not criminal in nature, but a general question to the audience why does a family stay together despite their differences.

And it’s not a question that I ask often, and a question that I don’t think profound. Families stay because of the bond of blood, we put our differences aside because we have to. I am not going to dig deep to answer why I love my mother, my sisters, my grandma, or any of my immediate family. I don’t feel obliged to. But props for Mauriac to try and answer this question (yet still falling short).

Mauriac, though the book is brief in its pages, was ambitious in the scope of his questions of family matters. What are our obligations to the institution of the family? And like each family, there is no universal answer and depends on the character, the nature and the temperance of the family. Jean-Louis sacrificed a humble ambition of being a philosopher-teacher to be a somewhat successful businessman, so that he can ensure his family’s sustenance. Yves, who had not much of an obligation to the family, moved to Paris and lives on his whims to continue writing his poetry. José, well, we don’t hear much from José.

Then there is the commercial side of the family business, where Dussol, as a manager was the tenured until one of the children was ready to take over. We view Dussol suspiciously at first, perhaps, but he is a good manager despite his differences with Jean-Louis and he claims that the workers trust him more. But the business ticks over, and we can’t say that the Frontenacs are too hard up. The balance between sentiments and logical necessity is part of the question of this mystery.

We see this in the beginning when Blanche cornered her brother-in-law Xavier on the question of her children’s estate. She rightfully did not want to bear the cost of living in a mansion with a small family when the only other remaining Frontenac, Xavier himself, is not living with them. Xavier also had to balance the books with his mistress Josefa, practically a lowly housemaid, but one of which have potential claims to the family wealth. He feels a weight of guilt for anything that he gives to Josefa, thinking that whatever he gives her comes out of the wealth of his nephews and nieces.

The throngs of wars ever closing to the Hexagon

The Frontenac Mystery had the hindsight of the first great war without the presage of the second, having been published in 1933. I can’t help to think that the Frontenacs may be a microcosm of France before the war, Jean-Louis, the entrepreneur holds the commercial side; Yves, a poet, is the artistic side while José, as fleetful as he was, held the military. These facets must also co-exist and flourish for France to stand. The dynamics between the brothers and their bond with each other is a testament to this balance.

The story was also directed by the breath and the gossips of war. The Frontenac children were growing up in a delicate time, where Germany was merely a benign neighbour and the military duties of the hexagon were dedicated to keeping their colonies in check. José stationed in Morocco, won’t know that he would perish in the artillery battle in the trenches of the Western front thinking of his mother’s embrace.

War, naturally would change everything, and the deaths of José and Yves were representative of the decay of the country’s military and artistic facets during the period. Some of the nation’s most talented artists gave their lives during this war, those who could have been literary giants had they survived (Henri Alain-Fournier, who wrote Le Grand Méaulnes comes to mind). But the Frontenacs are not without their seeds, and Jean-Louis’s offspring may germinate the seeds of the nation, to a stronger state. It is fitting perhaps, that the commercial pillar of the Frontenac provides the foundations for the next generation.

The mystery of Mauriac

As a first time reader of Mauriac and having read this book in its original language, which is not my original language, I felt lukewarm towards the author. But perhaps I missed some of the significance of the book because of the gaps in my reading (and shallow researches). But it is not a book that I would dive deeply into. My purpose of the book was a stepping stone to improving my grasp of the language. Though not the most complex, Mauriac may be a little difficult to follow at times.

Still, I did not care much about the characters. The Mauriac children, I felt, were spoiled children with mostly superficial problems much like anybody else. Even though this is supposed to resonate, when there is nothing to like about their persons, the connection with characters ring hollow. I couldn’t care any less about the mystery of the Frontenacs. They’re just like any other families with more money than most other families.

Still, I want to read more Mauriac. Though I don’t feel that he really cut deep into that perennial question of literature of what makes us human, he writes beautiful and enjoyable prose, and his other works, such as Thérese Desqueyroux, promises more.

---

Adapted from the Medium Blog, which you can find here along with my other rants on other books.

[Baris Balcioglu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pas principalement à cause du vocabulaire mais je n’ai pas pu comprendre toute l’histoire. Peut-être je n’ai pas trouvé la famille et les événements trop intéressant ou peut-être le style d’auteur était difficile pour moi. L’édition que je lus est de 1933. Yasemin me l’a donné. Originalement il appartint à sa mère défunte. On ne dit pas ça l’orthographe mais la façon d’imprimer a changé. S ou c quand suivi par t, on vois une arc commençant de t et arrivant au dessus de s et c par exemple. Je dois lire quelques choses plus interessantes en français. Mais je veux lire ceux que les autres ont dit pour cette œuvre..

[Roxana Truța · Rating 3 out of 5]

Citesc şi citesc şi-mi dau seama că niciun alt roman de-al lui Mauriac nu reuşeşte să se ridice la înălţimea Ciubului de vipere, care e una dintre cărţile mele preferate. Cu toate astea, odată ce te-ai apucat să citeşti un nou roman de el, nu te mai poţi opri până nu ţi se relevă noul mister familial pe care-l expune.

[Ivan Damjanović · Rating 4 out of 5]

Five star parts are watered down with an excessive mystification of the Frontenac family. It’s set in an era of fading patriarchal values; portraits family descendants with the different affinities and ways which also, naturally, end up differently as a result.

[Daune · Rating 4 out of 5]

Better in French. Torturous, interesting and very French.

[Todor Tchervenkov · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un livre émouvant à plusieurs égards, surtout, peut-être, par l'absence de feinte. Le mystère Frontenac, c'est le mystère de l'homme qui n'est pas que chair, pour qui les choses ont plus d'essence.

[Klemans Des · Rating 3 out of 5]

Histoire douce de vies qui passent et qui s'essayent.

[Harleen Dhunda · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Frontenac Mystery is an engaging tale about the lives and secrets of the prestigious French Frontenac family. I really liked how the prose was so lucid and emotional, bringing out the feelings of each family member. The story especially focused on the struggles of Jean-Louis, the eldest, a philosopher at heart who is forced into the family business, and on the life of Yves, the lovely but sickly child whom his pious mother, Blanc Frontenac, calls “closest to God.” Watching Yves grow into a charming yet tortured young man was one of the highlights for me.

I also enjoyed the third-person confessional style that let us see into their inner lives—it gave the book an almost satirical edge. To me, the real “mystery” was the hidden story of Josefa, the mistress of the Frontenac uncle, whom he kept secret to protect the family name. Even until his death, he felt ashamed of having loved her because she was considered “beneath” the Frontenacs in status and money. This felt like a subtle satire of French family values: the uncle was haunted by the memory of an ancestor who was condemned for the same thing, yet the Frontenac children still loved and respected him despite it.

What I did feel was missing, though, were more female perspectives. The daughters of the family are barely mentioned, just married off with no detail about their lives. The mother, Blanc, is shown as a lonely widowed homemaker whose sole purpose was her children. Yes, she was also a sharp businesswoman and an incredibly strong mother, but the story didn’t really give her more beyond that. Maybe that’s a reflection of the society at the time, but it still felt like a gap to me

The ending was particularly intriguing for me, especially the line about Yves, that despite being such a wonderful boy he could only find “love only in the form of suffering.” That really struck me it feels like the fate of many, to love and live through suffering.

Overall, I found the novel to be a subtle but powerful family story, written with clarity and emotion, and carrying a quiet critique of the values and burdens that shaped French families.

[Jill · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Mystery" in this title really refers to the Frontenac Way/Legacy/Unwritten Family Rules. This was a good, though somewhat arduous read. Mauriac is always heavy. His depictions are utterly believable, though. Part of that is because he's such a great writer. Part of it is because according to him, he recreates inside himself the places of a novel, its milieu, colors, and smells. He revives within himself the atmosphere of his childhood/youth. He says he is the characters and their world. Drawing so heavily from his own experience carries with it an authenticity that feels very real to the reader. There were two segments in particular that resonated with me, because I experienced something very like them:

p46 "His suffering came from the knowledge that another human creature could snatch his big brother from the life which they had always known, that the power to hold him in enchantment had passed from himself elsewhere." I remember vividly how it felt to realize that my family and its culture would never again be the same, because adulthood had set in.

p150 There's a scene where Yves is besotted with some nameless woman who just uses him for her amusement. She had told him some sweet nothing that he had chewed on for weeks, thinking it meant the world. When he mentions it to her in passing, she has no memory of it and basically denies having said it. He recounts the exact particulars to her of when she'd said it. Following that, she's annoyed. He suddenly realizes the words meant nothing. They were just passing words. "He so enlarged the smallest things she said. He had grown into such a habit of giving them a fixed value, an unalterable significance, and, half the time, they expressed nothing but a moment's mood."

[Agnes Fontana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pas d'énigme policière, ni d'histoire de revenants dans ce Mystère Frontenac... Le livre favori de quelqu'un que j'admirais beaucoup. Non, le mystère, c'est la façon dont tous les membres de la famille se sacrifient à celle-ci (la veuve à ses enfants, l'aîné aspirant philosophe qui accepte de reprendre l'affaire familiale, le tonton qui cache sa liaison et économise sur tout pour ses neveux)... et tout cela produit de la force et de l'amour, au fur et à mesure que la famille se renforce des sacrifices qui sont faits pour elle. Aux épouses qui questionnent, on jette à la figure qu'elles "ne sont pas des Frontenac" Et tout cela, grâce au talent de Mauriac, émeut au lieu de rebuter, malgré la circonstance que l'auteur parle de "dressage" s'agissant des filles... La nature, et en particulier les arbres, fait l'objet de fines notations (les prairies qui vibraient de façon folle), elle a un lien confus avec l'enfance et entre dans une sympathie mystérieuse avec les humains : la scène où, après la mort de la mère, la pleine lune fait briller dans l'herbe le médaillon qu'elle avait perdu et que ses enfants ont longtemps cherché, est inoubliable. Roman complexe, où chacun verra des choses différentes, et qu'on apprend à aimer peu à peu comme une vielle demeure toute grise au fond d'une province.

[Sophia Sidoli · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really struggled to connect with the characters in the story and found the vast majority rather unlikeable. I also found that none of the female characters had any depth and were all quite stereotypical. The book was very well written but there was neither a strong plot or interesting enough characters for it to be an enjoyable read on my opinion.

[Mirjam Lutter · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ich habe mich bei diesem Buch an Französisch versucht, es lag jedoch nur teilweise an sprachlichen Schwierigkeiten, dass ich die Handlung und die Charaktere als sehr zäh empfand. Zwischendurch gab es wenige Lichtblicke, aber im Großen und Ganzen war es kein Lesevergnügen!

[Aurélie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incroyable, le livre est haletant bien qu'il ne s'y passe pas grand chose
Mauriac a encore joué de son sublime dans les paysages autant pour que les états intérieurs des personnages dont on suit les passions avec engouement
La fin est sublime

[Elisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

读的时候一直怀疑我是不是看漏了什么，这个故事里的人物和他的平均水平相比是不是有点太……“好”了？或者说，虽然他的故事里（可能就像所有天主教精神驱动的作品一样）总是有非常理想化的人物，但这好像还是我第一次觉得他和小说人物的关系中间掺杂了某种不那么严肃的友好（和那种福楼拜为包法利夫人大哭的情感截然不同）。但也正因为此虽然只想给四星这却是我非常偏爱的作品。另外虽然他所有波尔多附近乡村背景的小说里都有松林，但这本书里有关松树的描写和比喻是我认为最精彩的。每一棵松树都带着自己的伤口而它们最顶端的枝叶共融于唯一的风声之中。

[Jim Jones · Rating 2 out of 5]

I usually love Mauriac's novels, but this one did nothing for me. I could not get interested in this family.

[Julia Rossina · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my first introduction to the author. A slow, poetic narrative of family life. Overall enjoyed it, and I will be reading some of his other novels.

[Jorge Maia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Antes de ser editado em livro pela Grasset em 1933, O Mistério dos Frontenac (Le Mystère Frontenac), de François Mauriac, foi publicado em cinco folhetins na La Revue de Paris, entre Dezembro de 1932 e Fevereiro de 1933. A tradução portuguesa, de Luís Forjaz Trigueiros, que também assina um prefácio, é de 1956, publicada pela Editora Ulisseia. O tempo da narrativa é o da segunda década do século XX, no período que antecede a Grande Guerra de 1914-1918. Apesar das personagens relevantes possuírem contornos delineados e diferenciados, que os individualizam, a obra de Mauriac põe em acção uma personagem colectiva, a família Frontenac. Esta opção narrativa indica...

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[Lionelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Belle écriture. Description d'une vie bourgeoise sans fantaisie aucune, empêtrée dans les conventions ou sauver les apparences et plus important que le bonheur. J'aurai détesté cette vie !