The Happy Foreigner

by Enid Bagnold

A story from the author of 'National Velvet' set in Northern France at the close of the Great War

Genres: Classics, 20th Century, Fiction, Literary Fiction, British Literature

Paperback

First published January 1, 1920

About the author

British writer of novels and plays, best known for National Velvet and The Chalk Garden.

For more information, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enid_Bag...

Reviews

[Carrie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Another Virago classic, this one written by the author of National Velvet (a book I never read, since my YA reading was more slanted towards plucky orphans than girls with ponies). This is a book for adults, and is Bagnold's first book - she wrote it after she spent some time in France during and after World War One driving cars for the French Army. It is, surprise, surprise, about a young woman, who is living in France, as a driver for the French Army after World War One. As I said, I've never read anything else by Bagnold, but I was not so impressed by this book. It is of historical interest to me, because (as I have often stated here) I am quite interested in World War One, and it was interesting to learn what life was like in France right after the war ended.

The writing, however, is not so good. To be fair, it was Bagnold's first book, but it is very much the work of a young woman who thinks she is very very clever, and is quite, quite fond of herself. The focus of the book is not actually post-War France, but is on the adventures of Fanny, the Bagnold stand-in, and, more specifically, a brief love affair she has with a French officer. The thing that makes the book drag is that I found Fanny to be a totally unpleasant character. She treats the whole experience as a grand adventure, in which she can do whatever she wants, breaks all the rules - to the detriment of others, disdains the American and Russian soldiers, as well as the French civilians. The way she treats a woman who returns home to the house she has been billeted in is particularly disgraceful. The woman has returned home for the first time in years. Both of her sons were killed on the front, and her home has been occupied by soldiers for years. She shows up at her own home, and is understandably angry to find Fanny living with the remainder of her things. Fanny acts as if this poor woman is an unreasonable interloper and a miserable shrew, not a tragic figure.

It would be one thing if Bagnold was purposely writing the story of a narcissist, or even of a woman who is too young to really understand the horror and loss around her. Actually, that could be a really interesting story - the young English frivolity compared with the exhausted French. The problem with The Happy Foreigner is that (at least in my opinion), the reader is meant to admire brave Fanny, full of life and love and happiness. And I just can't believe that anyone, no matter how spunky, would be able to run around devastated Western France acting like that without getting smacked. I wanted to reach into the book and smack her myself. This one was a bust, I am afraid, unless you have a penchant for annoying women.

[Moonkiszt · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had a difficult time staying engaged with this long, long, long drive to somewhere. It was in WWI and I should have cared a lot more than I did. I have relatives, a grand-aunt who was a nurse in France in that time, and wanted to care, wanted to like Frannie.

I did not. I do not blame the characters. I think they were savable. The writing was ok - fine, enough. It was the plot development - like a diary, reporting the drives she took and who she met, and the damn thing ended at the same level of excitement (none) that she began with. And all between. . . .just the same.

2 stars is generous. I would have expected more from the writer of National Velvet. Ah well, this was her first book, so may be part of the proverbial learning curve.

[Audrey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enid Bagnold, who wrote National Velvet, is represented with several volumes in the Virago Modern Classic series of books. This one is a fictionalized first person account of a woman's experience as a driver in France after WWI. There are vivid descriptions of a country and her people starting the long road back after war. There are refreshingly dry descriptions of the hardships that Fanny, who is based on Enid herself, endures as a woman driver. There is a love affair which is lightly treated as well. I would recommend this book to a YA reader as a companion volume to one of the many great WWI novels.

[Hector Castro · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've read Enid Bagnold's "A Diary without Dates," and loved the rhythm of that work, which is what led me to "The Happy Foreigner." The style is similar to that of her earlier work - there are a lot of vague descriptions that provide a sense of place without necessarily spelling things out and characters seem only partly described. It took some getting used to, but after a few pages, it read quite nicely and I finished it over a week of evening reading.

As to the character of Fanny - I loved her. She was certainly young and self absorbed. There is a scene where she makes a poor woman work incredible hours and recruit some local children to make her a dress for a dance. But in other scenes, Fanny demonstrates a generous and kind heart - she gives the hammer from her toolbox away to a villager trying to rebuild his home, she stops to pick up an elderly woman walking along an empty road despite irritating the Russian official she is ferrying about in her car, not to mention she is a volunteer in the French Army, unpaid and on the hook for paying for her own uniforms.

She also demonstrates quite a bit of fortitude and pluck, dashing across all manner of wasteland in post-WW1 France, not to mention becoming mechanically adept enough to maintain vehicles of the day.

Yes, there is the love affair, and while it isn't the most interesting aspect of the book, her involvement with the young man drives much of the narrative.

The one element, however, that I struggled with in the book is the ugly and unnecessary use of the N word in one scene and her need to refer to one soldier as being Jewish any time he's mentioned though it adds nothing to the description and, in both cases, there would have been better ways to describe the characters.

I've read alot of books from a number of literary periods and, yes, I know language like this was not uncommon, but it was also considered offensive then just as it is today.

There are other merits to the book and the time period being described that, I believe, make this a worthwhile read. And, in fact, I'll very likely reread it at some point.

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't even seem to articulate how I feel about this book. I've cherished several copies, and it's one book I always put onto my little e-reader device just so I have a bit of Enid with me.

[Вікторія Слінявчук · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Счастливая иностранка" - беллетризованные мемуары Энид Багнольд, вышедшие в 1920 году. В них она рассказывает о своей службе в французской армии в 1916-1917 году. Главная героиня Фанни - это сама Багнольд.
Мне книга понравилась, и странно, что многие рецензии на Goodreads - ругательные. Как, мол, она посмела писать о платьях и танцульках, ведь это военное время?! Надо сказать, что за все военные годы Фанни-Энид один раз смогла пошить себе бальное платье и покрасоваться в нем на танцах - во время ее недолгого пребывания в Меце, и это для нее было действительно большим событием. В основном же ее жизнь - это тяжелая, изнурительная работа военного шофера.
Интересно пишет Багнольд и о положении женщины в армии. По тем временам женщина - военный шофер - это было почти скандально. "Только англичанки на такое способны!" Великобритания в ту пору лидировала по части женской эмансипации. Многие осуждали(!), а удивлялись практически все. Кстати, служила она на добровольных началах, денег за это не платили никаких.
Хотя ее служба проходила не так уж близко к линии фронта - военные действия к тому времени уже переместились восточнее - ее работа всё ещё оставалась опасной. Ей приходилось ездить через разрушенные города и села, вдоль полей недавних сражений; места эти кишели мародерами и дезертирами всевозможных армий. В общем, может, кто-то заметил только описание одного платья и одного бала-маскарада, но на меня произвела большее впечатление печальная картина послевоенной разрухи и медленного возвращение к нормальной мирной жизни. Очень интересна глава о посещении Вердена, практически уничтоженного в ходе военной кампании 1916-го года, и знаменитой цитадели, расположенной под городом. Одна из самых сильных сцен в книге - разговор Фанни с трактирщицей, у которой был дом в Вердене, хороший дом в хорошем районе; героиня рассказывает бывшей хозяйке о том, что осталось от ее чудесного дома...
Впрочем, я понимаю, почему Багнольд обвиняют в легкомыслии. В ней нет ремарковского надрыва, нет нагнетания трагизма (война и ее последствия трагичны сами по себе, нагнетать нет надобности). Не зря французский офицер, с которым у Фанни был мимолетный роман, назвал ее "счастливой иностранкой". Она настолько самодостаточная и цельная натура, что, кажется, с легкостью переносит всякие лишения. А еще она несколько отстраненно смотрит на всё, что её окружает, похоже, что ее внутренняя жизнь для нее важнее всего внешнего. Но я бы назвала это не легкомыслием, а хладнокровием, что ли.

[Susan Kavanagh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enid Bagnold has written a terrific description of the post-World War One landscape in her autobiographical first novel about Fanny, a young British woman who goes to work for the French First Aid Unit as a driver in 1918. The introduction to my green-spined Virago edition stated that the author had gone to France to draw inspiration for a novel. The book was put together from the long letters she sent her mother during her service. She describes the deprivations the drivers experienced, particularly during the first six months when they lived in a small hut made mostly of tarpaulins. The reader feels the constant rain, the grueling hours with no days off and the awful food, consisting of pots of greasy coffee and tinned meat. Finally they move to Metz, a German city in the Alsace Lorraine region. Here the French have decided to show the Germans their culinary superiority and the streets are filed with bakeries. On her first day there, Fanny consumes nine eclairs. Metz is also where Fanny meets the French Captain with whom she will fall in love.

Although Bagnold creates a perfectly serviceable young romance set against the background of a world recently torn apart, for me the strength of the book lies in her ability to show how quickly the former allies tire of one another. The French, who are very poor by this time, resent the young, hearty Americans who yearn for home. Fanny drives all nationalities around. She is stranded by breakdowns and is robbed by Chinese troops. Before reading this book, I had no idea there were Chinese troops in France during WWI. Even more memorable is a scene that takes place in an incredible fortress built under a hill in Verdun. After driving a Russian soldier to this fortress, Fanny stays overnight in very nice accommodations. She keeps seeing more and more soldiers in the tunnel and realizes that they have come to look at her--the only woman they have seen in months. At the end of her service, Fanny sees the civilians returning home with nothing as they attempt to take up their interrupted lives. In a contemporary review of the novel, Rebecca West praised Bagnold's ability to provide "a uniquely vivid and impressive picture of the desolation of the war-ravaged areas."

[Cera · Rating 2 out of 5]

The entire time I was reading this book I was uncertain whether or not I liked it, and having finished it I'm still unsure. I think I can appreciate the craft of it, but I didn't really enjoy it.

The book is about Fanny, an Englishwoman who goes to France after WWI to drive for the French army. It's a very impressionistic novel, based on the author's own experiences, and there are lots of individual bits of prose which are just gorgeous. Fanny notices landscape, scenery, decoration, people, and describes them all in a fashion I found dream-like, her own feelings mixing with what she's seeing.

Why didn't I enjoy it? I found it so impressionistic as to be vague; I never really understood who Fanny was, where she'd come from, where she thought she might be going. (I see the art in that, the way that a woman after the war might feel like all she had was the present, both past and future irrelevant.) I was able to keep tabs on her emotional state both through her reaction to what she was seeing, and via direct statements by the narrative voice, but I never connected to her emotionally; she was so alien to me that I ended up not really caring what happened to her.

Now that I think about it, the title is even more appropriate than I realised; she really is the happy foreigner, the woman whose past does not haunt her, whose future does not trouble her, who can visit a devastated, desolate France and then leave again, seemingly untouched by the experience. Perhaps I will reread it, eventually, and read it closely enough that I can put together enough of who Fanny is to feel something for her one way or another.

[Gill · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's always interesting to find our more from an author whose books (or in this case, book) you admire. I have always loved National Velvet and was disappointed not to find it on Kindle. However this fictional account of Enid Bagnold's experiences as a driver for the French in post WW 1 France is worth reading.

I found it most interesting for the fact that it tells a WW1 story that I had never heard of. I had no idea that English women volunteers were drivers in post-war France. Several of the incidents Bagnold writes about would have happened to her - for example the description of staying in the tunnels under the ruined city of Verdun, and the night when she is sitting with her broken-down car miles from anywhere, and a stealthy hand reaches out of the darkness and takes her packet of food.

The story of the love affair is the least interesting part of the book, as Bagnold gets a bit carried away with her writing style, but for a snapshot of an aspect of women's work in World War One which is seldom written about, it's well worth the read.

Enid Bagnold had a fascinating life both before and after WW 1 - check out her biography. She also wrote "The Chalk Garden", a play which was made into an excellent film in 1964, starring Deborah Kerr, Hayley Mills and John Mills.

[Kirsty · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Happy Foreigner is another lovely little Virago, and it is one which I have been most looking forward to, especially since reading Enid Bagnold’s intelligent and adorable novel The Squire in a beautiful Persephone reprint last year.

This novella is set in the aftermath of war, and begins just after ‘The war had stopped’. The protagonist of the piece is Fanny, who is in Paris when the story opens, and soon finds herself travelling to a rural part of France. She has travelled to France to ‘drive for the French Army’. The sense of place and time which Bagnold has crafted feels astonishingly real. It is a sweeping and beautifully written story, and the descriptions throughout are stunning. Bagnold is an author who certainly deserves to be read more widely, and from both a social and historical perspective, The Happy Foreigner is a marvellous read.

[Kay Robart · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Happy Foreigner by Enid Bagnold is interesting as a record of conditions in France right after World War I. In fact, at the time of its publication (1920), it was lauded for its journalistic qualities. The book is almost certainly quasi-autobiographical, although it was published as fiction.

See my complete review here:

http://whatmeread.wordpress.com/tag/t...

[Sareene · Rating 2 out of 5]

This isn't great. Bagnold's _A Diary Without Dates_ is more interesting. Still, I have enough for 1/3 of a dissertation chapter.