Un balcon en forêt

by Julien Gracq

1939, ce sont les premiers mois de ce que l’on appellera la drôle de guerre. Période de suspens, d’attente particulièrement dans les Ardennes où l’aspirant Grange a pour mission d’arrêter les blindés allemands si une attaque se produisait. A la fois île déserte et avant-poste sur le front de la Meuse où montent des signes inquiétants.

Genres: Fiction, France, French Literature, Historical Fiction, Literature, 20th Century, Novels

253 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1958

About the author

Julien Gracq (27 July 1910 – 22 December 2007), born Louis Poirier in St.-Florent-le-Vieil, in the French "département" of Maine-et-Loire, was a French writer. He wrote novels, criticism, a play, and poetry.

Gracq first studied in Paris at the Lycée Henri IV, where he earned his baccalauréat. He then entered the École Normale Supérieure in 1930, later studying at the École libre des sciences politiques.

In 1932, he read André Breton's Nadja, which deeply influenced him. His first novel, The Castle of Argol is dedicated to that surrealist writer, to whom he devoted a whole book in 1948.

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Straight away Julien Gracq emphasizes the irrationality of war and the novel begins as if the main hero is going to some wicked never-never land…

“A train for the Domain of Arnheim” thought the lieutenant, a great Poe enthusiast, and as he lit a cigarette he leaned his head back against the serge upholstery so his gaze could follow the crest of the high, shaggy cliffs aureoled by the low sun.

The beautifully baroque language of the book is in the outright contrast with the dire irreality of everything that happens.

Sometimes the beams crossing his uncurtained window wakened Grange during the night, like the lighthouse that had brushed across his panes on that Breton island where he had slept so badly; he got up, leaned on the sill, and for a moment watched the strange columns of light slowly, warily wheeling in the winter sky; then an image from his childhood reading occurred to him; he remembered H. G. Wells' sick Martian giants screaming their incomprehensible woes across the stupefied landscape.

Nothing seems to be happening but the air is oversaturated with anxiety and apprehension… And the uncertainty of the endless waiting begets the atmosphere of fatality.
It is very interesting to compare A Balcony in the Forest with Weekend at Dunkirk by Robert Merle – both novels boast identical aura of doom…
Everything that occurs, occurs the last time: last hopes, last dreams, last desires, the last love…

“How old are you?” he would ask her sometimes, stroking her eyebrows with his finger, staggered by her beauty, blinking as if into too bright a light while she laughed her throaty laugh and lightly ruffled his hair – but he realized that his question had no meaning, that youth, here, had nothing to do with age; she belonged to a fabulous species, like unicorns. “I found her in the woods,” he mused, and a certain wonder touched his heart; there was a sign upon her: the sea had floated her to him on a stone slab; he felt how precariously she was granted; the waves that had brought her would take her back again.

Human beings loathe war but their inhuman political leaders keep them warring.

[Candi · Rating 4 out of 5]

“… it was surprising that a war should be so inhabitable—its gesticulation remained wordless, as if observed through plate glass, as if an enormous bell jar had been lowered over the heart of Europe, over the world’s heart; he felt himself trapped beneath this bell, the exhausted air tight against his temples and his ears ringing.”

I believe the author of this novel, Julien Gracq, would be in complete agreement with Erich Maria Remarque, author of that well-known work, All Quiet on the Western Front. In a nutshell, both would tell you that war is pointless. Those that are sent to battle often don’t know exactly what it is they are fighting for. The people in charge don't give a damn for these soldiers. Young lives are prematurely ended due to the power and corruption of others. It makes me heartsick every time I read about such horror.

This story involves very little fighting. Instead, it’s all about waiting for the inevitable. Lieutenant Grange has been sent to the Ardennes Forest on the Belgian border during the winter of 1939. Despite the onerous task that has been assigned Grange and his three men, that of preventing enemy units from advancing by blowing up the road to the Meuse line, much of their daily life looks rather idyllic. The surrounding forest has a magical aura, holding Grange in a sort of enchantment. Part of that spell is also attributed to a young widow from the region. Grange quickly falls for Mona, who is childlike yet seductive.

“Nothing puzzled him more than his hunger for her, in which there was never satiety, nor weariness, and which her first appearance, disturbing, ironic, so meagerly sensual, had utterly belied…”

I can’t say this was as affecting as Remarque’s notable WW1 piece, but its message is just as clear. The prose and the descriptions of the forest are beautiful, especially in contrast to what we know was happening in the world at large. Eventually, as the war comes closer to the isolated bunker in the woods, the tone takes on a more ominous note. The forest itself is like a character with a changeable mood.

“It seemed to Grange that the earth itself was yellowing with disease, that time was working there, underneath, with a slow fever: they walked upon it as on a corpse that was beginning to smell.”

I won’t divulge the end, but it moved this reader for sure. I guess it’s not that hard to move me to tears these days, given current events, but I think Julien Gracq’s writerly skills had a good hand in this as well. I’m going to see if he has any other translated works – hopefully something a bit more upbeat next time!

“The world seemed no longer inhabited save by dead souls—faint and light as the tongues of fire hovering over the marshes; the time for questions had come to an end, the day had died away.”

[Geoff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lieutenant Grange is one of those poor dreamers- like Walser, like Pessoa, like Eugene Eyestones even- who have realized that happiness is the desire to be nothing, but who have been called by circumstances to be something; in Grange’s case, this something is a watchman in an enchanted forest above a world caught in a reverberating hesitation, anticipating a leap into complete catastrophe. Grange the Dreamer finds himself alone on a train in the autumn of 1939 being taken deep into the Ardennes Forest along the French-Belgian border; but where he ends up exactly we might better call the garden of Klingsor’s magic castle (or we could as easily name it the Arden of “As You Like It”, or Poe’s “Domain of Arnheim”: ”The garden like a lady fair was cut, that lay as if she slumbered in delight, and to the open skies her eyes did shut. The azure fields of Heaven were 'sembled right in a large round, set with the flowers of light. The flowers de luce, and the round sparks of dew that hung upon their azure leaves did shew like twinkling stars that sparkle in the evening blue.”)- and our good lieutenant is even given, through the logic-blessing of a dream, his own Kundry. Mona she is called, the wood-spirit, rain-nymph, naiad. So Grange the Lonely finds himself utterly at home, with his three vague comrades and his mythic lover and his domain of magic woods that weep rain and bestow ancient light and exhale air that is scented with the timeless incense of lavender, wisteria, moss and leaf-fall. Snowfall throughout that empty winter only adds to the cloistered atmosphere of reverie. Only one road must be watched; only one inevitability delayed as the winter passes; as Spring approaches and our dreamer is ever more unsettled from his idyl by encroaching lights and thunder emanating from the valleys- an inhuman metallic clamor that vibrates the forest- he finds himself conjuring ways to deny the manifest truth that the cruel world doesn’t let dreamers sleep forever. One must wake, and awakening is signaled by disturbances in the dream; bright fissures are rent in the dream-substance; the illogical reality conjured in slumbering quickly becomes unstitched; the world a sleeping mind weaves is invariably unwoven- for there are no pleasant dreams without the tyrannical orders of the waking world with which to compare them. A mythic forest, by definition unreal, must also be indifferent to human beings- eternity doesn’t bother itself with trifles- and Grange is but a reclusive watchman on this magic mountain during this staggeringly brief period of months closing shut like the jaws of a wolf devouring a faun. We dreamers here alive now know what happened in the Spring of 1940. The Phony War proved to be as phony and insubstantial as the flitting pictures projected onto a movie screen once the house lights have come up. Oh but to remain asleep and dream through the horrors of history. Oh to lie with our lovely nymph through all the bitter tears of time. To be Parsifal, who stops the spear in mid-flight before it strikes and releases our dear Kundry, dove now, freely into the bright air.

[Mariel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't know if I've ever read a book that is so much a Mariel kind of book as this one. This means nothing to anyone but me. I don't care. This review is for me and anyone else like me. All of the things that I squint view, the staring at lamps and suns squinting, too bright and spotty and unsustainable to find in everything else. Julien Gracq would call it "the unattainable sea in a shell". I'm listening as far away as I can. All in my own language. His was French, originally. Not my language. (Gracq was a schoolteacher in France. My great-grandparents were French schoolteachers, too. Not to mention all of those prisoners of war. I was born for this.)
It could be a Mariel book that is so much a Mariel book that it is not so much anymore. I was reminded to feel the outsideness at the same time that I recognized the soul drift. I cannot love me and there's something about A Balcony in the Forest that I cannot really love. (Maybe that'll change later. This is one of those books that turns a lonely walk outside at night into poetry.) The separateness. The last line is that he lays down and pulls the blanket over his head and goes to sleep (my kind of book). The desire and the beautiful parts and the intimacy. Man at war, man in love, man alone, man waits, man sleeps. Another review says it is a beautiful book where nothing happens. This is not nothing to me. The stakes are the will to live and love.


"Her resemblance to a plant in the sun, her characteristic openness, her way of growing firm and straight within the grain of life, had straightened him out despite himself: in her radiance, he was no more ashamed of his secret withdrawals than a tree in sunlight of its twisted branches. There was only that strange sensation of falling free, that drifting nausea which became his vice, which he never mentioned to her, from which she remained excluded, and which was yet perhaps the essential thing about her."

Mona was the little girl beautiful that I don't give a fuck about. The one that is in every novel ever, it feels like sometimes. I die inside, a little, and lock myself out when this is the dream. If it's in their heads and then it is on the pages... What's so special about that? I don't need permanent mystery of a mercurial French babe in the woods (literally) to egg on my longing. Is it closeness? I'd feel more being the hot on heels dog after the rabbit. At least you can taste the blood in their mouths. What do they want to do when they get them? There is something lonely about what someone else finds romantic. There's something dead about the only in dreams love like this. If I can envy them this romanticism then it means a lot to me. The innocent love just for them. I didn't. Mona didn't mean anything to me in her nakedness and kissing and childish petting ways. It may not have been genuine. I had no way to know other than this is what he wanted. Why? I do know about the nausea, though. The mystery was a way to keep apart from the rest of everything else. It is scary when you are going to lose the only fire you ever had to move. Something like a solar eclipse.

"The world had gone to sleep like another Olivet, exhausted by fear and foreboding, intoxicated with anxiety and weariness, but the day had not disappeared with it: there remained this cold, abundant light which survived all human caring and seemed to glow upon the empty world for itself alone- this abandoned nocturnal eye that opened before its time and somehow seemed to be looking elsewhere. It was still daytime here- a strange daylight limbo laved by fear and desire, a barren brightness that did not warm: the light of a dead moon."

I felt the in between. The wanting the darkness to happen and opening yourself to it. No one else is left and you can't taste the blood of the catch because there was no where to get at all. Gracq must have meant for the dream to be the desire, all on its lone. I have an idea I know what he's talking about here and it's still not all that solid to explain why it is so romantic. It is so lonely to think about what's romantic to anyone else. Unshared. A Balcony in the Forest is lonely. I know that I like to read books like this because I feel like this a lot.

So I still suck at saying what all of this is but this is definitely one of those books, to its core. That core is a sea in a sea shell. Absolutely. The right phrasing from me will never be the dreamed light on the bottom of the forest that I search for (if it comes from inside it feels too outside). But this is the kind of book I look for because it could be. Maybe others look for it too. (Most of the time I feel like I'm missing the point even mentioning this stuff. But A Balcony in the Forest is nothing but that stuff. I wasn't weird or stupid this time. I'll call it my lunarcy. Some books make me feel good about being like this and this one makes me feel hopeless about it. Still, at home. Mostly.)

[Lee Klein · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love when this site leads to masterpieces previously unknown to me. Stoner, most memorably, and a few others. Now this one. Sumptuous prose, never over the top as in The Opposing Shore, steady, flowing, so clear its perception verges on surrealistic swervy poetry. Gracq might just be the supreme poet of anticipatory anxiety, and seculsion in a dense forest with the pulse of bombs on the horizon like heat lightning is therefore maybe his ideal setting. As in "The Opposing Shore," nothing much happens, which is the point for ninety-five percent of this as our man Lt. Grange (le focus of le novel's close-third POV) waits for the Germans to come through the forest near the Belgium border and raid the blockhouse in the trees where he and three subordinates are stationed. There's a little forest sprite in this -- an innocent widowed proto-hippie sexy child -- who might turn off folks turned off by male writers writing about sexy little sprites, but Mona worked for me because she emerged from the forest and seemed descended from the sexy little sprite in Undine, a myth I read a few months ago about a lady o' the forest who's equal parts woman and brook. It's gripping toward the end as the war (early WWII, 1939) ramps up, but the prose is what happens in this one. Let's just say that not in a long time have I thought about starting a book from the beginning as soon as I finished it. Felt it was perfectly weighted, paced, perceived. Can't recommend it more highly to anyone who appreciates it when tip-top prose sans empty experimentation supports masterful evocation of a world and character/theme/forward propulsion. Language in this seemed always at the level of Salter or Updike but with a surrealistic sheen that elevates it. Ordered four more short Gracq novels as a result.

[Το Άθχημο γατί του θενιόρ Γκουαναμίρου · Rating 5 out of 5]

In October 1939, Lieutenant Grange is appointed in charge of a small fort, hidden in the Ardennes forest, near the French border with Belgium. He goes to war, perhaps expecting death, and instead discovers a world where the possibility of a war seems highly unlikely: In nature, while the seasons change, people in the neighboring village continue to live their peaceful lives, the few soldiers accompanying him become his friends, and on a rainy day, while walking down a forest path, he encounters love.

This is the charming result that occurs when a surrealist decides to write realism: The dreams are bound to reality and supply the mind and the senses with images, thoughts, feelings and ideas that otherwise would not be possible to be expressed.

But war is ante portas...

Αυτό είναι το γοητευτικό αποτέλεσμα που προκύπτει όταν ένας σουρεαλιστής αποφασίζει να γράψει ρεαλιστικά: Το όνειρο και το παραμύθι δένονται με την πραγματικότητα και τροφοδοτούν το νου και τις αισθήσεις με εικόνες, σκέψεις, συναισθήματα και ιδέες που διαφορετικά θα ήταν αδύνατο να εκφραστούν σε όλη τους την ένταση και έκταση.

Είναι Οκτώβρης του 1939 και ο υπολοχαγός Grange αναλαμβάνει τη φύλαξη ενός οχυρού, κρυμμένου μέσα στο δάσος των Αρδεννών κοντά στα σύνορα της Γαλλίας με το Βέλγιο. Πάει να πολεμήσει και πιθανώς να πεθάνει κι αντί αυτού ανακαλύπτει έναν κόσμο που το ενδεχόμενο ενός πολέμου μοιάζει εντελώς απίθανο: Μέσα στη φύση, καθώς οι εποχές αλλάζουν, οι άνθρωποι στο γειτονικό χωριό συνεχίζουν να ζουν την ήρεμη καθημερινότητά τους, οι λιγοστοί στρατιώτες που τον συνοδεύουν γίνονται φίλοι του, και μια βροχερή μέρα, καθώς περιπλανιέται σε ένα μονοπάτι, συναντά τον έρωτα, κρυμμένο μέσα σε μια κάπα, με λαστιχένιες μπότες που της επιτρέπουν να πλατσουρίζει άφοβα στις λιμνούλες του νερού "μια νεράιδα του νερού, μια ναϊάδα, μια μικρή μάγισσα του δάσους".

Ο ήρωας αισθάνεται ελεύθερος και σκέφτεται "ίσως ο πόλεμος να είχε και τα ερημικά νησιά του". Ίσως αυτός χάρη σε μια ευτυχισμένη σύμπτωση ναυάγησε σε έναν κόσμο όπου "ο πόλεμος ήταν μια τεχνική λεπτομέρεια", ένα ενδεχόμενο που με λίγη καλή τύχη δεν θα συνέβαινε ποτέ.

Έχει μεγάλο ενδιαφέρον το γεγονός ότι στην πραγματικότητα ο συγγραφέας υπήρξε αιχμάλωτος πολέμου σε στρατόπεδο συγκέντρωσης στην Hoyerswerda (περιοχή Bautzen, Γερμανική Σαξονία, παλαιότερα γνωστή ως Σιλεσία). Αλλά όταν γράφει το μυθιστόρημά του, δεν επιθυμεί να αφηγηθεί περιστατικά και γεγονότα από τη δική του ιστορία. Κάνει ακριβώς το αντίθετο.

Δημιουργεί ένα σύμπαν, ένα ασφαλές περιβάλλον όπου η φρίκη του πολέμου βρίσκεται σε μια προσωρινή παύση κι εκεί κρύβει τους ήρωές του, τους προστατεύει και τους προφυλάσσει μέσα στο πυκνό δάσος, όπου τις νύχτες φτερουγίζουν πυγολαμπίδες και ο αέρας είναι καθαρός, οι άνθρωποι ήρεμοι και ελεύθεροι, έναν κόσμο που δεν διψάει για αίμα αλλά για φιλιά και έρωτα. "Βρήκα την ουσία μου" λέει ο ήρωας "είναι εύκολο, πάντα θα μπορώ να είμαι ευτυχισμένος εδώ πέρα".

Ειρήνη εν καιρώ πολέμου. Αυτή είναι η θεμελιώδης αντίφαση που αποτελεί τον πυρήνα του έργου. Και καθώς ο πόλεμος πλησιάζει και σφίγγει τελικά τον κλοιό γύρω από τη μικρή νησίδα ελευθερίας και ευτυχίας του νεαρού υπολοχαγού Grange, η ελπίδα για κάθε διαφυγή μικραίνει. Τι άλλο υπάρχει για να σωθεί ο άνθρωπος πέρα από τα όνειρά του;

[Matthew Ted · Rating 5 out of 5]

9th book of 2024.

Some of the finest prose I've read in a little while. Gracq felt like a master at every beat. Every sentence is loaded with imagery and rhythm; this plotless novel is buoyed along by the poetry of the sentences. The first half feels like a peaceful apocalypse. Grange is in a forest in the Ardennes, waiting for the Germans to invade, or not. I'd say 80% of the book is dedicated to the meticulous creation of the forest through words. By page one-hundred I had so much underlined that it felt like an impossible task to try and record any of it, to choose any favourites. At times, it was exhausting to read because I wanted to savour every line. It is, quite literally, 180 pages of waiting for the climax, which happens in the final 20 or 30. Dreamlike, peaceful, but also claustrophobic and terrifying, the limbo of it was like the stasis of lockdown: I remembered as we came out of it here in England, I resented the fact*; I wanted to stay in my cocoon forever. For Grange, it becomes something like that. The long spaces between the trees, the soil, the falling leaves, the falling snow, the receding snow, the returning snow... It becomes a part of him and his psyche. I was hypnotised by the whole thing. I'd like to take a number of sentences from the book and pin them on my walls. Without bias, I have opened the book at random points and taken sentences from the pages. My favourites are probably not among them but they give an honest portrait at the book's landscape.

High up, against the great clouds that stirred the sky, Hervouet pointed to a buzzard slowly circling, barely moving, borne on the exhalation of the warm forest like a piece of burnt paper above a great fire.

Half dozing already, he listened calmly to the forest growing.

Then the silence of the place became almost magical. A strange feeling ran through him each time he lit a cigarette in this forgotten wilderness; it was as if he were slipping his moorings; he entered a world redeemed, rid of men, pressed against its starry sky with that same dizzying swell of the empty sea.

Every ten yards or so, Grange turned and glanced suspiciously at the empty thickets: this pocket of calm half-light around him was becoming venomous, like the shadow of the manchineel tree.

And so on, and on. As the blurb aptly puts, this Howard translation captures the 'fairy-tale otherworldliness and existential dread of this unusual, elusive novel'...
_______________________

*As Byron's "Prisoner of Chillon" reads,

'So much a long communion tends
To make us what we are:—even I
Regain'd my freedom with a sigh.'

[S̶e̶a̶n̶ · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the stillness leading up to the 1940 German invasion of France, a reluctant lieutenant and his men occupy a concrete blockhouse in a remote forest near the Belgian border. As the slow weeks creep into months, summer turning to autumn giving way to winter, Lieutenant Grange lives a dream-like existence, entranced by the forest and the young widow Mona whom he encounters one day on the forest road. The stalled war both confounds and lulls Grange into a state of perpetual self-examination. He wonders if the war will ever start and, if not, whether perhaps he might stay in this green paradise indefinitely, sheltered within the unconventional domestic bliss that has arisen between him and his men. As the signs and sounds of the approaching war finally do increase, Grange's reactions alternate between hazy denial and an unanticipated growing excitement. Gracq's prose is hypnotic in its lush, sensuous descriptions of life in the forest, which plunges forward in all its intricacies, oblivious to the impending war. His deft control of language, ushered into English here by translator Richard Howard, allows the reader to come near to the curious, complicated experience of a human life enveloped and transformed by the natural world.

'The forest,' he thought again. 'The forest.' He couldn't have said anything more than that: it was as if his mind were yielding to a better kind of light. Walking was enough: the world opened gently before him as he advanced, like a ford through a river.

[Tony]

What is there between the war and me? Lieutenant Grange asks himself near the end of this story.

He is not quite alone, this reflective soldier, assigned to a concrete bunker, with upstairs chalet, deep in the Ardennes forest. There are the three comrades he commands; and a convenient girlfriend. We meet her, Mona, when mon lieutenant does, and it's a very cool first meeting. Mona is sprite-like. Sadly, the author does not share her very much with the reader, who would like very much to know more about her, especially in her final scene where she is lying in bed, blond hair a mess, barefoot, dressed in jeans and her maid's shirt, reading a book. But I digress.

Stuff happens eventually, war stuff, but it was a slough for me to get there. Grange had to light a cigarette on seemingly every page and observe things in a metaphorical fashion. To-wit:

- The stone was like a pulpy feminine substance, its skin deep and sensitive, downy with all the subtle impressions of the air.

Like that.

At one point, Grange's commanding officer tells him, "I have no objection to fighting the war with men who have found their own way of deserting." And I suppose that's what this book is about. What that did though, was to remind me of Going After Cacciatio, a much, much superior book about the same theme.

Anyhow, we know that sometimes in Literature facially commonplace events can really be speaking about war, and that stories of war can really be tales of the human soul. That's how it works.

I thought of this when I read this profundity very near the end of this book: all wounded men drag themselves toward a house.

[[P] · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have felt, throughout the year, an intensifying fear, an increasing discomfort, a kind of claustrophobia, as though something terrible, something unavoidable, perhaps even fatal, was closing in on me. A couple of days ago, this feeling reached an apex, and drove me out of the house around midnight, with no plan or direction in mind. However, once outside a strange sort of calm came over me. The streets were clear, the sky starless and raven black; and the cool air was like clean linen against my skin. I lit a cigarette and, as I dragged on it, I watched the tip dancing in the dark like a firefly. Then, out the corner of my eye I spotted a spider, suspended on its web; a black jewel in the centre of an ornate crown. I walked over to it, expecting to experience the usual grotesque fascination, the instinctive desire to crush, and yet, as absurd as it sounds, I was moved.

I thought about leaving, about getting on a train, a hopefully deserted train, to nowhere in particular; an attempt to outrun my existence. But of course, I did not. I went back inside; and, with a lamentable reflexive cowardice, searched my shelves for a book that would comfort or speak to me in my present mood. The one that stood out for me in this regard was A Balcony in the Forest by Julien Gracq. Indeed, it begins with a man on a train, Lieutenant Grange, who, as he travels, feels as though he is leaving behind the ‘world’s ugliness.’ Set in 1939, the ugliness of which Gracq writes, and which Grange wishes to avoid, is, of course, the second world war. Yet for much of the novel the war is in the background, is more a threat than a reality. It is manifested in the sound of French soldiers coming from local houses, and is evident in the flowerbeds trampled under hobnailed boots.

“This stretch through the fogbound forest gradually lulled Grange into his favorite daydream; in it he saw an image of his life: all that he had he carried with him; twenty feet away, the world grew dark, perspectives blurred, and there was nothing near him but this close halo of warm consciousness, this nest perched high above the vague earth.”

The primary focus is on Grange’s mundane existence as the commander at a blockhouse in the Ardennes forest, the post to which the aforementioned train was taking him. His days there are, we’re told, ‘pleasingly empty’, which is to say that they are relaxing and mostly free from army activity. He chats to the men under his command, he meets a woman, he wanders through the forest; he, rather comically, considering the circumstances, sits in a garden chair, sips coffee, and plunges into ‘a kind of dreamy beatitude.’ It is as though he is on a long rustic holiday, ‘slowly vegetating at one of the least sensitive nerve endings of the war’s great body.’ All of which might make A Balcony in the Forest sound tremendously dull; however, although it is certainly low on high octane thrills, it features some of the most beautiful nature writing I have read and has a stately grace to it that I found compelling.

Moreover, while WW2 is generally off stage in terms of action, it is still ever present in the mind of the reader, if not always the characters; in fact, it dominates the book by its absence, and this is what gives it its emotional punch. Everything that Grange does, specifically the way that he looks at and experiences the forest, is related to the war. There are numerous references to the silence of his surroundings, for example, and one understands that this is unusual, is out of sync with the times, and cannot, more importantly, last, for very soon the tanks and guns will shatter it. Indeed, there is a overriding sense of the unreal. The forest itself is described as being ‘magical,’ ‘endless’ and ‘unconquerable.’ For Grange it acts as a kind of ‘fairy tale’ refuge, or ‘forgotten wilderness’, which is virtually cut off from ‘the inhabited world.’ This world, the inhabited world, is, one cannot forget, about to be thrust into bloody chaos.

Before concluding, I should deal with Mona, for in the limited number of reviews of the novel on the internet she is cited as its biggest flaw. She is introduced as a figure in the distance ‘splashing from puddle to puddle’, which sets the tone for all of her [limited] appearances. When Grange catches up with her he likens her to, or even believes her to be, a rain sprite, emphasising her otherwordliness and, once again, the magic of the forest. At various points she is described as childish, or child like, as well as puppyish and kittenish. To some extent, I can understand certain readers’ irritation, for she is certainly not a rounded character; she is a male fantasy, a down-to-fuck forest fairy. However, what this kind of criticism overlooks is that it is Grange’s perception of her, not the author’s, and, as such, it is consistent with his frame of mind and the tone of the novel as a whole. Furthermore, no character in the book, not even the Lieutenant, is well developed; they are all essentially one dimensional.

“In this forest wilderness perched high above the Meuse it was as if they were on a roof and the ladder taken away.”

I have read three of the four novels that Julien Gracq wrote, of which A Balcony in the Forest is the last, both in terms of its publication and my own relationship with his work. Often, it is compared to his most acclaimed novel The Opposing Shore, which is itself compared to Dino Buzatti’s The Tartar Steppe. Yet while all three are about waiting for war, it differs from its more well known brothers in that they are principally concerned with impatience and disappointment. The central characters in The Opposing Shore and The Tartar Steppe yearn for a more exciting existence, while Grange wants quite the opposite; he is happy to remain inactive, to be forgotten, overlooked, left alone. This is a novel of avoidance, and the joys of isolation; it is about hiding in enchantment, about finding, and clinging to, a haven of peace and tranquility, if only for a short time. As such, it was, despite the shame I feel at my head-in-the-sand tendencies, probably exactly what I needed; and, looking at the unstable world around me, a world that appears to be violently haemorrhaging, it could be just what you need too.

[Jeff Jackson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Julien Gracq, damn. This was some of the most beautiful prose I've read in ages. The story revolves around a French soldier stationed in the remote woods during the long run-up to WWII. There are plot elements about love and war, but the novel sidesteps all conventions and expectations to unfurl its own unusual tale. It's a book thick with intoxicating atmosphere, moments filled equally with dread and wonder, grounded it reality but with a strong whiff of magick. Anyone who's ever found themselves marooned between situations and waiting for life to make a move, anyone who's ever found a way to comfortably embrace denial, will be able to relate. A moving story about life during dreamtime.

[Nate D · Rating 4 out of 5]

An unearthly stillness, a limbo, a lull. Several seasons passed outside of time in a forest outpost at the edge of the world, yet about to be entirely overrun by history.

The Balcony In the Forest, perhaps channeling some of Gracq's own wartime experiences, follows a soldier appointed to a four-man anti-tank bunker on the French-Belgian border in late 1939. Amidst interminable uncertainty and dreadful anticipation, he begins to fall in love with his mostly-unpopulated natural surroundings, the mists and snows and fluttering foliage, but also his fellow dwellers out on the edge of civilzation (and what use, a civilization foisting world war upon them?).

Gracq was a surrealist, but he sticks to a strictly realistic course of events here. Instead, it's in his perfectly formed language of supernatural-natural beauty that he conveys the experience of a dream, of enchantment, of the feeling of sinking willingly into another world outside the one about to be torn apart by artillery shells.

[Hux · Rating 4 out of 5]

I remember reading The Opposing Shore and thinking that one paragraph was the most exquisite prose I'd ever read but the next was the worst bloated fart I'd ever come across. The whole book was just relentless baroque language, overly verbose, neatly executed nested sentences, which at times produced genuinely magnificent language but at others was overwrought and self-indulgent. Anyway, I wanted to read him again at some point but I was slightly put off by that initial experience. 

So I finally got round to this, and I must say, by comparison, it's delightfully understated (at least as far as the prose is concerned). The language here is more restrained to say the least but, interestingly, covers almost identical ground when it comes to themes. Because this, just like Opposing Shore, is about a man waiting for war to happen. But this time, it's not a fictional landscape, it's the Belgian Ardennes region at the start of the Second World War in 1939, the forests of this area, a small, seemingly insignificant location of little apparent strategic interest to the Nazis but a place, nonetheless, that must be guarded, mined, and manned. Our protagonist, Grange, is, along with his men, lost in a dripping wet woodland of fairies and mystery, a misty landscape of ambient uncertainty, all the while waiting for the war to eventually find them. The book creates a beautiful atmosphere of both anxiety and magic, of being hidden from the world but knowing that it will come crashing into their lives any day now. And all this is done with very understated language, nicely curated prose, restrained, thoughtful, and even a little cautious. I'm not sure if Gracq read The Tartar Steppe (1940) but he seems to be equally fascinated by the idea of waiting for a conflict as Buzatti was. Waiting for something. For life. For death. Who knows, but it's wonderful.

That all being said I thought the lack of action or progress in the narrative made the piece a little dull at times. And then, as if to fill the book with something, he throws in a bizarre romance with a girl called Mona which, to me at least, came across as slightly false, redundant, and mostly pointless. I guess the book couldn't stay in the woods forever. The relationship started well, with a rather erotic explosion of promiscuous sex (the best kind) but after this initial intrigue, their relationship was essentially a background noise of little consequence and added very little. 

Yet despite this treading of water which the book engages in for long periods, I really did like it a lot. There is something beautiful in it, something sad, stoic, eerie, something which is very human. His writing is always superb albeit in service of a story that is wafer thin and very precarious, especially when you consider he already covered this ground in The Opposing Shore. But it's another great example of this particular genre, the wasted years, the wasted life, the sensation that life is being experienced by others, elsewhere, in more dynamic fashion, but not here, where we are simply waiting. Always waiting. 

Not without its flaws, but highly recommended all the same. I wonder if Buzzati and Gracq ever met, perhaps in some room with magazines, just sat there in silence with each other, waiting for the other to say something.

[Paul H. · Rating 5 out of 5]

So I had read Gracq's Opposing Shore a while back, was moderately impressed but not blown away -- hadn't really thought to return to his other work until L.K. recommended Balcony, and yeahhhhhhhh this book is seriously good (currently #29 on my top 100 novels of the twentieth century).


The prose: for lack of a better word, perfect (like 9.9 out of 10); absurd virtuosity, hard to think of a clear analogy, maybe Camus at his absolute best (The Plague). Salter, but good? Bowles, but more lyrical? David Jones? Broch but less boring and Germanic? I randomly kept thinking of Leguin's Earthsea, her descriptions of nature especially. At a couple points the prose struck me as being maybe almost-sort-of pretentious but then I realized that it's just French; somehow they can get away with it.


The plot: solid but not life-changing, I don't think quite enough events occurred, he needed one more story beat (maybe Mona interacts with the soldiers?); hard to explain but I feel like he somehow didn't manage to split the difference between a novel and a novella. Story-wise, Balcony is almost precisely For Whom the Bell Tolls as written by a French poet (I'm very, very curious if Gracq had read Hemingway), where the protagonist is . . . also a French poet. I kept thinking of Malick's Thin Red Line as well, the same poetic languor, a vaguely anti-war war story. Finally, you could also see Balcony as the photographic negative of Household's Rogue Male.


The characterization: a prime example of a case where an author can get away with ZERO character development. After 213 pages you know literally nothing about the protagonist except that he has some familiarity with WW1. His consciousness is a mist-shrouded dream (quite intentionally, the forest begins transforming him on the first page, and even his brief leave to Paris has no effect). The trick is that it's very hard to be a good enough writer to manage this; it works because this novel is really a prose poem, scripture, a myth, and we don't expect character development in a poem or a myth; and the protagonist is universal, a cypher, an archetype, ourselves. (Incidentally, Knausgaard's great achievement is to manage this effect while writing an autobiography, somehow.) Or, as Proust put it, "since an image is the essential element, a simplification entirely suppressing real characters would be a decisive improvement."


The themes: similar to many other authors of Gracq's generation, the real theme here is the disenchantment/de-divinization of the world after and/or as a result of WW1 and WW2. The protagonist's immersion in sylvan myth, the enchanted forest, etc., can only end with his death; his author knows that the old world is going to pass away by 1945. Mona is presented quite straightforwardly as a forest nymph; and the references to pagan/Christian myth begin on the first page and don't stop even once the Germans (inevitably) attack by the end of the novel. I found it to be particularly impressive that Gracq didn't go for the obvious route of "once the war begins, the protagonist is shocked into reality"; rather our hero still remains somehow spectrally outside of the war, which itself is presented (at times) in terms of martial myth. But he can also sense, somehow, that the world is becoming disenchanted; is he escaping history? Or is he going to something deeper than history, to nature's eternity?

[Victoria · Rating 5 out of 5]

Magnifique... La poésie de Gracq m'a encore transportée, et ce roman vient seconder de très près Le Rivage des Syrtes, qui est pour l'instant mon préféré de sa bibliographie. Cette histoire d'angoisse sourde qui monte tout doucement sans qu'on veuille la reconnaître, de guerre qui point sans se montrer, m'a d'ailleurs fait penser au thème de l'attente développé dans le Rivage, et que l'on retrouve ici de façon plus concrète, peut-être un peu plus accessible. Une merveille, que j'ai dévorée en deux traites !

[Troy Alexander · Rating 4 out of 5]

When war has been declared and you’re waiting for the fighting to reach you. Described on the back cover as a novel of long takes.

Exquisite prose. 4.5 stars

[Liviu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very beautifully written book in whose' subject I had almost no interest but it kept me reading to the end.

Set in a fortified guardhouse on the Meuse from 1939-1940 and following a French officer's story in the face of confusion, uncertainty and ultimately defeat, the book flows magnificently.

[Old Man JP · Rating 5 out of 5]

An exceptional story about Lieutenant Grange and a few men who are assigned to a concrete bunker in the Ardennes forest as the Germans are advancing on Belgium, just across the border from them. Julien Gracq's writing was remarkable as he told of the idyllic quiet forest setting they were in and the silence and serenity that made the war seem so far away. In this peaceful setting Lieutenant Grange enjoyed the beauty of his surroundings and fell in love with a local girl, living life as if there was no war. But, as the story went on Julien Cracq slowly began building up tension in the narrative creating an ever growing ominous feeling of what was to inevitably come. It is a beautifully written story but Cracq's ability to slowly transition from such a serene setting into war was magnificent.

[Benedict Ness 📚 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sublime, the kind of book one wishes one wrote oneself!

So many books are in the midst or aftermath of war, so few detail the waiting for it.

Those Frenchies were right, this is ✨the✨ surrealist book, full of the most gorgeous sumptuous chewy poetic prose.

I will be responsible for a huge uptick in sales for this book. The (I imagine) small team at Julien Gracq’s estate will take themselves for a long and boozy lunch to celebrate.

[Nati Korn · Rating 5 out of 5]

לפני זמן מה קראתי את "מדבר הטטרים" לדינו בוצ'אטי – יצירה קפקאית על קצין במוצב מבודד המצפה למלחמה שאינה מגיעה (או שלפחות בעבורו לא תגיע לעולם). והנה קראתי יצירה החולקת עם "מדבר הטטרים" את אותו הנושא וכמעט את אותה המשמעות. בעוד שספרו של בוצ'אטי מתרחש בעבר לא מוגדר ובמקום שיכול להיות כל מקום, הרי שההתרחשות ב"מרפסת ביער" (ה"גזוזטרה" הארכאית מיותרת, בתרגום יפה בעיקרו אף שאינו ערוך בקפידה) מקובעת בזמן ידוע ומקום מוגדר. מדובר במספר חודשים, הקודמים לכיבוש צרפת בידי הצבא הגרמני במלחמת העולם השנייה ובגבול צרפת-בלגיה, ביער הארדנים.

גראנז' הוא מש"ק מילואים בחיל הרגלים. הוא מוצב כמפקדם של שלושה חיילים בבונקר בטון קטן בלב היער. הבונקר בנוי על פי הדגם הפרוידיאני – קומתו העליונה היא בקתת מגורים וקומתו התחתונה ביצור טחוב ובו תותח קל נגד טנקים. מלבד סיורים ביערות לאורך הגבול ותחזוקה של העמדה אין לחיילים הרבה מה לעשות. תפקידם להפעיל את התותח אם יפלוש טור משוריין גרמני בדרך ההפרדה שבלב היער ולחסום אותה. רוב הזמן מנותקים החיילים מן המפקדה, ניתוק בלב הטבע, אותו הם מקבלים בברכה, שכן, כידוע, המילואים ובפרט המלחמה משנים את אורכות החיים, כופים ביטול של השגרה העירונית והמשפחתית על כל טרדותיה ויוצרים חופש מוזר ומשחרר באמצע החיים. בקיצור - הגיעו למילואים, חשבו עושים חיים. ישנם כמובן גם כמה אותות מבשרי רע. הקצין המפקד של גראנז' הוא היחיד שאינו נתפש לאשליות אך מלבד כמה הערות חמוצות הוא חסר יכולת להתמודד עם שאננות פיקודיו ועם דרכי החשיבה המאובנות של הפיקוד העליון וחוסר תפקודו של הצבא הצרפתי המיושן. קצין שריון צעיר המבקר בעמדה לאחר שהטנק שלו מתקלקל בסמוך לה, נדהם למראה הבונקר ואומר לגראנז' כי במקומו היה נמלט מן המקום ורומז לו כי כשיגיעו הטנקים הגרמנים הם לא ינועו בשיירה אלא יהיו מלווים בכוחות קומנדו. בנוסף ישנו בסמוך לעמדה כפר זעיר וקסום, מעין ממלכת פיות, נטוש בחלקו ומאוכלס בדמויות נשיות בלבד, השוכן מבודד בלב קרחת יער. בין גראנז' לבין מונה, דיירת בכפר, סוג של אישה-ילדה דמויית פייה מתפתח רומן.

בעצם, אם תבקשו ברומן הצנום הזה עלילה נוספת או משהו מעובה יותר, לא תמצאו. זהו כל הסיפור. אז במה בעצם מדובר? מדובר כאן בהתמודדות עם קונספציה, קונספציה שאינה שונה בתבניתה מקונספציות אחרות (לרבות זו שלנו כאן בישראל), וצורתה התמכרות לשגרה, לחיים הטובים, תוך חוסר אמונה (או אי רצון להאמין) כי מתקפה מסתמנת אכן תתרחש באמת ותהפוך את חיינו. אבל זה אינו ספר עיון העוסק בניתוחים היסטוריים של פסיכולוגיה צבאית. העסק כאן מהופך. הקונספציה היא רק תבנית כללית, משל ליחסים שבין הדמיון למציאות, בין החיים למוות ובין המעשה הספרותי לממשות.

לא ידוע הרבה על גראנז', חוץ מן העובדה שהוא חובב ספרות ובפרט את כתביו של אדגר אלן פו. הספר נפתח בהגעתו של גראנז' לאזור, אזור שכאמור בדומה לסיפוריו של פו נמזגים בו הגותי ביומיומי, הקסום במציאותי והאסתטי בארצי. בפסקת הפתיחה מדמה גראנז' כי הרכבת המובילה אותו היא רכבת ל'אחוזת ארנהם' – המופיעה בסיפור של פו על מקום מבודד הבנוי לפי אסתטיקה רעיונית מוקפדת. המתח המלווה את הסיפור אינו שונה הרבה מן המתח בסיפורו של פו 'מסכת המוות האדום' – אנו והגיבורים יודעים כי בחוץ משתולל המוות אבל חשים שהוא אינו יכול לגעת בנו, לפרוץ את גבולותינו. כמובן בהמשך גם יופיעו עורבים מבשרי רע, המרמזים שלא ניתן להתחמק מידה הקשה של המציאות – אך הגיבור השבוי בחוסר האמונה יתעלם מכל האותות הרעים ויפרש הכל, גם כאשר יתחיל העולם להתהפך, מתוך אי אמון במתרחש, חוסר הבנה ותקוות קלושות.

גראנז' הוא אדם הלכוד ברשת הדמיון, כל ההקשרים שהוא מוצא הם הקשרים לעולם הספרות. העמדה המבוצרת בלב היערות נדמית לו בשנתו כספינה או ספינת אוויר בכתביו של ז'ול וורן. במידה מסוימת כל זה מביא אותו להרגשה כי הוא חי למעשה את עלילת יצירת הביקורים של טולסטי 'הקוזאקים'. (בזמנו קראתי קובץ סיפורים של טולסטוי בהוצאת ה'ספרייה החדשה'. בקובץ היו שתיים מיצירותיו הנודעות ביותר – 'מותו של איוואן איליץ'' ו'סונטת קרוייצר' הדחוסות והקודרות. היצירה שחתמה את הקובץ ותפסה להפתעתי כמחציתו הייתה 'הקוזאקים'. ניגשתי לקרוא בה בחשש - יצירה משנית, ארוכה, של סופר לא מיומן, בעלת שם לא מזמין. אבל החששות התבדו – הסיפור התגלה כיצירה נפלאה הכתובה ביד קלה, והפכה ליצירה האהובה עלי בקובץ). היא מספרת על צוער בן אצילים, שלו משרת אישי, החי חיי תפנוקים, המגיע לשהות באזור הקווקז על הגבול עם צ'צ'ניה. הוא מתמקם בבית בסטניצה של קוזאקים, מתחבב על בני המקום (שהם הלוחמים האמתיים) ומתאהב בבת הכפר. אבל האידיליה לא מחזיקה מעמד ובסופו של דבר הגיבור המפוקח עוזב את המקום.

למעשה מדמה גראנז' כי הוא אותו אולינין האריסטוקרט, שחבריו לעמדה הם הקוזאקים השורשיים וכי הכפר הסמוך והקסום, על שביליו וחצרותיו הציוריים הם הסטניצה, ומונה אהובתו היא מריאנקה בת המפקד. ולמעשה זה רק נרמז. אם תרצו ניתן לומר כי גראק מספר מחדש את 'הקוזאקים' על רקע מלחמת העולם השניה ויער הארדנים.

אנו מוצאים כאן תיאור של המתחולל בנפשו של גראנג'. לנו ולקוראיו של גראק בשנות החמישים ברור מה צפוי להתרחש ואכן התרחש, בסופו של סיפור. ומכאן האתגר שעמד בפני גראק – כיצד להתל בקורא, כיצד לגרום לו להזדהות עם הלך רוחו של גראנז'? הוא עושה כן באיטיות (התמשכות הזמן מדגישה את הניתוק בו חיים הגברים בעמדה) אבל בדיוק רב באמצעות השפה ותמונת העולם הסוריאליסטית והחצי קסומה. עיצוב הסיפור שונה מאוד מכתיבתו של בוצאטי. מצד אחר הרומן ריאליסטי ביותר, מבחינת המראות שהוא מתאר (בניגוד לנוף המצודה המוזר והמנוכר שמציג בוצאטי), אבל הדימויים בהם משתמש גראק להעביר את הריאליזם דרך מסנן רגשותיו של גראנז' הם פראיים ומשולחי רסן – בארוקיים מאוד. התוצאה היא העברה מדויקת של רגשות המתהווה מתוך שלל הדימויים המשולחים וכליאת הקורא וגראנז' עצמו בעולם של דימויים. זה אינו זרם תודעה, אלא תיאור שהוא ברובו בגוף שלישי, אבל הוא אינו שונה הרבה מזרם תודעה בשל זרימת הפרועה של הדימויים. ליער שמור כאן מקום נכבד: מראותיו ורחשיו פולשים ללא הרף אל מתחמי הבתים והחדרים והגיבורים מרבים לשוטט בתוכו. למעשה רובו של הספר הם תיאורי הטבע. הכתיבה מזכירה מצד אחד את 'דרך פלנדריה' של קלוד סימון ומצד שני את ס. יזהר. כל העסק מאוד צרפתי, הן הבארוקיות הפראית, החצי נחלמת, או השיכורה (הגיבורים כמובן מרבים בשתיית יין) והן תיאורי מעשה האהבה. שילוב של תיאורי טבע ומצבי נפש המשתלבים ללא הרף ומשקפים אחד את השני.
מבחינתי כל העסק הזה הצליח מאוד. נהניתי להתנתק בשעת הקריאה ולהישאב אל תוך החורף ביערות הארדנים, ממש כפי שגראנז' נהנה להתבודד בהם. מדובר ביצירת מופת קטנה, אבל מעוצבת בכשרון רב ובעבודת נמלים.

נ.ב. קראו גם את 'הקוזאקים' של טולסטוי.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is my first book that I've read and I really liked it.

3.5* Balcony in the Forest
TR André Breton, Quelques Aspects de l'Écrivain

[Jess M · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm happy to see the abundance of well written reviews of this amazing book. Simultaneously I'm surprised to see how many reviewers have skipped an aspect of the novel which I connected so intimately with.

Like the author's first novel (The Castle Argol), this to is an homage to nature. Our protagonist is so immersed within the silence and beauty of his surroundings that the acts of men fall outside his perception; even when they come in the form of an ever likely German invasion.

The core and bulk of his short novel has nothing to do with the times in which it is set, or the actions of its simple cast of characters. Instead it is a beautifully written vehicle that takes the reader into the deep and pervasive solitude that the wilderness offers us. Those who are content to be alone "rapturously alone" can count Gracq among their Saints.

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

He thrust his hand into his pocket and felt the key of Mona's house. A great livid moon rose slowly over the forest as he watched; its slanting beams glowed on the road, the rough gravel bristled with sharp shadows, becoming a stream bed once again. Nothing seemed more important now than to be sitting beside such a stream, at the heart of the earth's deep labor. He felt a sudden revulsion at the pit of his stomach, as if he had run into the sea across a cold beach: he recognized the fear of being killed; but a part of himself stood aside, floating on the current of the buoyant night: he felt something of what the passengers in the ark must have felt when the waters first lifted it off the ground. [184]

🔈 Adrián Demoč / Popínavá hudba

[Cody · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s fine. Wrong book at the time.

There are moments in life when our real shit makes the existential ennui of waiting in the Ardennes (as fiction) seem like so much framework to hang too obvious meditations on. Plus, Gracq’s larger thesis is one usually reified during the initial phase of getting stoned: solipsism made falsely prismatic by the cover of Dark Side of the Moon. One can just throw that on and get the same lesson: ‘There is no dark side…it’s all dark.’

Plus some killer Rick Wright-Dave Gilmour action, to boot. Breathe in the air.

[Chuck LoPresti · Rating 4 out of 5]

Suspended between the expansive distances from the intensity of war and the peaceful protection of the Ardennes, a soldier waits for a war to unfold beneath the forest canopy. Will the bullets and bombs put an end to the slow and well observed days of pastoral bliss? Gracq's writing is slow but not boring, detailed but unencumbered. A calm lucidity makes the perfect juxtaposition for the violent hum of a war never far away. Air moves in waves, stones are frangible and daylight turns into a crepuscular radience as the forest imposes its will on everything that passes through. Parts reminded me of Stifter's Rock Crystal, another NYRB Classic that uses the force of nature to illuminate the thoughts of men. I wouldn't call this surreal but everything happens on the fringes of reality, spun by gossamer threads pulled far to the expanses of human experience. The story takes a back seat to the descriptive prowess of Gracq and there more than a few moments when his writing is so, well...beautiful...that you wish noting would continue to happen.

Not sure I've ever read anything exactly like it before but another possible point of comparison would be Banffy's Trilogy - where the beauty of the forest and the joys of passion are of no minor concern compared to the wars that rage around them, for now.

Short, lush and unique. Another great read from NYRB.

[sean]

Balcony In The Forest is a slim novel that follows Lieutenant Grange and his men as they shelter in the Ardennes forest during World War II, awaiting the approach of enemy forces. The novel is often described as surrealist, but Gracq's style is closer to Woolf's modernism than Andre Breton, who apparently admired his first novel. This is a lyrical, romantic book in some ways, but its protagonist is fraught with a lingering feeling of near-total individual negation. Much of the novel's tension hinges on a sense of unreality, and obfuscates the boundary between a static, unchanging self, and the irreducible natural world. Throughout the novel, Lieutenant Grange is haunted by a sense that he is not really there, that his sensory awareness and inner psychic experience lack a tangible connection with physical reality. The seasons change around him, the fertile and verdant ecosystem thrives beneath his feet, and yet he struggles to claim any ontological certainty. Indeed, when Grange finally grasps that certainty, it's already too late: at the novel's conclusion, limping away from a brutal enemy attack, he removes his belt and notices a fatal gunshot wound to the hip.

[Abby · Rating 3 out of 5]

The prose, mediated though it is through the translator, has a dreamlike quality that I enjoy, but which is also distancing. It's appropriate, because Grange's alienation from himself and from others is central to the book, but it prevents me from fully entering his mind or the world of the novel. It's still very beautiful, though some of the descriptions of women were off-putting.

[Michael Jantz · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best kind of book.

[Malcolm · Rating 5 out of 5]

For good reason the period from September 1939 to about March 1940 was referred to as the ‘Phoney War’ – at least on the western borders of Germany; it was a different story in Poland and the Czechoslovak Republic. This era is, it seems, overshadowed by events such as the evacuation at Dunkirk, the occupation of Paris and the confirmation of the Vicky regime in the south of France – and that is not surprising given that, for the most part, armies waited. That is what happens in this fine novel from the late 1950s: soldiers wait.

Waiting does not imply doing nothing. In this case, the four soldiers occupying a lookout post in the Ardennes spend the several months living through the winter in a small chalet built over the post. Along the way they gather wood for the fire, cook, keep themselves and their kit in order, visit the local, supposedly evacuated, village where a few remain and the commander, Lt Grange, takes a lover, maintain contact with their command centre and keep an eye out for the invasion that they (and of course we) know must come. Knowing it must come means that there is a risk of seeing it when it isn’t there, of mistaking the noises of the night for the noises of the invasion, or of falling into an overly confident expectation that if it hasn‘t happened yet it never will – that the Phoney War is all there will be. What’s more, with nothing much happening four men must find a way to get along, to keep themselves focussed, to manage their relationships between themselves.

Gracq’s novel is a fabulous study in waiting, building its drama from the everyday and the unknown, creating trepidation and uncertainty, knowing that when all this ends it will come suddenly, violently and will be as expected – and as such is an excellent novel of war and of love, of men and manliness, of solitude. That is to say, it is a novel of war largely devoid of any fighting – and all the more engaging and compelling for it. That is to say, it is highly recommended.

[Daniel Polansky]

A dreamy, lyrical work about a soldier’s pastoral idyll along the Belgian border during the fall and winter of the Phony War, operating rather unsubtly as metaphor for the French nation. My tolerance for descriptions of bucolic settings tends to be pretty low, even if those descriptions are very good, so I probably liked this one a little less than it deserved. On the other hand, it’s pretty rare to read a book about war which takes a new slant on the thing, which this definitely does. Worth your time, even if it wasn’t one of my absolute favorites.