Alcoholism is a depressing topic and mid-way through my first reading of Le repos du guerrier I was close to giving up. For a non-native French speaker this is a linguistically challenging novel. The language is idiomatic, the dialogue veers between crackling and cryptic, and there are more than a few words that can't be found in any good standard dictionary. I've been months reading it. It has had to compete for my time with daily reading of French newspapers (I took out a subscription to Le Monde), work on the final semester of a Diploma of Languages at the Australian National University, and other distractions. Finally I started again at the beginning and I'm glad I did. This is a very good novel.
The narrator is Geneviève Le Theil, an earnest single woman of sober habits who has just inherited a modest fortune from an aunt she barely knows. She meets, in the most unpropitious circumstances, a man, Renaud, who will simultaneously ignite a passion in her such as she has never before experienced and take her down a path that brings her close to ruin ; Renaud and Rafaele's projected drama of Orpheus and Eurydice, but with the gender roles reversed, is emblematic of the lives of the book's central protagonists. It is Renaud who makes life hell for Geneviève, but her supine devotion in the face of his contempt and mockery makes her a culpable party to her own sufferings ; her determination to overwhelm his demons with her love resembles that ideal of self-sacrificing womanhood so dear to religious reactionaries, and I suspect many contemporary readers will cringe. To my mind the remarkable thing about the book is that Rochefort succeeded in persuading me that these people were real ; Renaud's lofty contempt for the world and everyone in it (existential angst?), and Geneviève's passionate attachment, have a quality of genuineness about them. Both protagonists have courage, and in time Renaud comes to appreciate it in Geneviève, I think, as she does in him ; and that, with intelligence, may be what (at last) makes their love mutual.
The two opening paragraphs of the novel are set in a time when what follows (in the narrative) is behind Geneviève. It is a moment of reflection on the scene of devastation which is Geneviève's life (later in the novel, Renaud's references to surviving Hiroshima would baffle me, and I'm not convinced I completely understand their import, but they too are clearly meant to be emblematic of rebuilding after catastrophic events). Geneviève muses on her circumstances:
Il faut brûler ce passé une bonne fois, comme de vieilles lettres, et qu'on n'y pense plus ; il faut que je quitte Renaud, puisque aussi bien lui-même s'est quitté. Et continuer. Dans le même sens. Et vivre. Avec ce que j'ai. Que j'ai voulu. » (2nd paragraph, p. 7)
This is a novel about starting again with nothing, passing on the torch of life (the aunt's legacy is introduced with the significant words : « Une affaire de succession ... » p. 7) ; it's a novel (published 1958) for the post-war reconstruction generation. The life force is shown to be very strong in spite of everything, and I find that exhilarating.