What do you think?
Rate this book
Courir le vaste monde
18e siècle, au coeur du pays Pagan, le destin attend Lison et Eliaz. Pour elle se sera une vie de couturière à Brest et pour lui l’aventure, il sera marin. Mais ce chemin n’est pas celui de Lison, dans ce monde d’hommes pour les hommes, elle va tracer sa propre route et sa vie, à elle aussi, sera une aventure ! Passagère clandestine, exploratrice, amoureuse, Lison va forger sa propre légende et nous raconter toute la beauté de son existence.
Grand roman d’aventure, saga, récit de voyage, Alex Cousseau sait comme personne ressusciter l'histoire et nous faire monter à bord d’un navire. À nous, les embruns et les tempêtes, pour nous son histoire douce et furieuse.
Grand roman d’aventure, saga, récit de voyage, Alex Cousseau sait comme personne ressusciter l'histoire et nous faire monter à bord d’un navire. À nous, les embruns et les tempêtes, pour nous son histoire douce et furieuse.
361 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 5, 2025
1 person is currently reading
6 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
November 28, 2025
To be fair, when I saw the cover, I wasn’t very inspired by this book. When I discovered it was a first point of view narrative where the narrator talked about past events, it inspired me even less. But I gave it a try, and it was pretty great!
-The knowledge-
One of the main qualities of “Courir le vaste monde” is the plenty of information in it. If you’re fascinated by sailors and ships, you will find your happiness for sure. I learned a few words too, such as “empech, scull, yardarm”. I appreciated that the author goes far in his depictions of sailing and historical context. Indeed, the Renaissance period and its land discoveries are well known but not that much of a book topic. The world wars are for example more written about. The maps were thus useful as they gave us an idea of how navigators perceived their world back at the time and where were our protagonists.
Most of the time the facts are given in a beautiful way. It especially marked me two times: firstly when Lison sees the ocean for the first time and thinks “It looks like nothing, that’s what I tell myself. It’s like a lung. Like the continuity of the sky, or its underside” and secondly, it’s when the brother and sister arrive in Brest:
“A few elegant figures, encased in their velvet corsets, rub shoulders with half-drunk sailors, children in rags, and merchants displaying their wares under makeshift awnings. The dripping adds to the general clamour, the drops bouncing off the cobblestones sounding like the chirping of invading insects. My head is spinning. I pull down my hood and cover my ears. Now that silence reigns in my head, when I look around me, I no longer think of a beehive, but of a maze of intestines. The belly of a fish being gutted. The knife of the sun has cut into the living belly of the city, and the rain is causing ochre blood to flow over the iridescent scales of the cobblestones.”
-Side characters-
I liked how side characters were written. Even when they briefly appear, we see that the author has imagined a whole lore behind them. Doucin and Carpe were my favourite ones: they embody the same paternal figure who’s nice with the protagonists but doesn’t get too involved in their life, they’re just here to support their friend when they need it. The historical figures were also unique and fun. I liked how frankly Lison was when she said Kerguelen was a fraud and that he, as many other colonisers, didn’t travel overseas to discover new continents but for fame, wealth and without an ounce of regret for the populations hurt.
Besides, characters can be ambivalent: Jobic is a loveful father but he doesn’t take care of his daughter’s opinion, Lison took the dream of her brother just because she wanted to stay close to him and Eliaz is attracted to the sea without even knowing why: “You're right. The ocean is a well of sorrow. The place where all human tears have been poured since the dawn of time. – Maybe that's it. Maybe it is a well of sorrow. But then I don't understand why you want to throw yourself into it.”
In addition though, subjects are delicately treated. For example, Ugenie’s rape is forshadowed many chapters before. The silence of the Cognée brothers makes us understand that something terrible happened and the character of Lachausse shows us that sexual predators can appear in the story.
-The form-
The retrospective aspect of the book didn’t bother me. I’m usually not a fan but it was well handled and fitted perfectly with the idea of explorator memoirs. The fact that the narrative alternated with her brother’s adventures was a great thing too. I allowed us to take a break while following the ‘official’ part of explorations.
I was surprised that Lison broke the fourth wall because it seemed obvious that she was the one writing her brother’s chapters but it was interesting. This chapter shows us the matter of Eliaz’s gaze for her.
However, I wasn’t fond of the spiritual part of the story. Firstly, the name “kingdom of sparkling hearts” seemed too childish for me. I know Lison grew up using that name but coming out of a 16 years old girl like the most serious thing felt a bit weird. Moreover, the storytelling around dead people living as nature elements and mental connection through bats didn’t affect me… The kelpman also looked too goofy for me to be touching.
-Adventures and ending-
I found the story too rushed, or at least too different to what Lison was implied at the beginning of the book: when Eliaz arrives at the Cannibal Island, we realise that Lison never took actions by herself and she never truly travelled or lived an adventure. She just got into a boat, drifted through the sea and ran aground an Island. It disappointed me a little because the first 250 pages described a real adventure but it stopped since Lison and the Cognée brothers were evicted from the Olifant.
What’s more, the whole relationship between the Cognée brothers and Lison made me uncomfortable. There are a lot of reasons for that. Firstly, Lison is a young girl with none love experience: she never had a lover before, she had her first periods a few months ago (btw she doesn’t bleed anymore after her first ones) and she straightly goes from ‘I think I love the Cognée brothers’ to having sex with them the next chapter. From the moment she’s in love with them, they don’t have a single conversation, they don’t talk about their feelings, they don’t kiss, they don’t speak about anything. Plus, I have no problem with polygamy but the Cognée brothers are twins. Older than Lison. You don’t sleep with two twins at the same time when you’re sixteen. Finally, making Lison pregnant wasn’t the best idea in my opinion, she’s still very young, it happened by accident and the father left before even knowing he had a child. I’m not even sure that Lison was happy about her love story as she’s completely silent and frozen when the boat rescues her.
One last thing about the ending: I guess it’s supposed to be a happy ending but it doesn’t look like it. At the beginning, Lison fights to escape her condition of woman: she doesn’t want to be stuck or work as a tailor: “I don’t want to be a tailor” but then becomes a mother at 16 and says “I'm going to settle down in a quiet corner and stay there. I'm going to look for some sewing work”. Her brother won’t achieve his dreams either as he joins her to live in a house in the countryside.
Overall, I have mixed feelings for this novel. The story is full of knowledge and ardour but the ending is too rushed. Anyways, the writing remains beautiful
PPS: Song recommendation: Little talks by Of monsters and men
-The knowledge-
One of the main qualities of “Courir le vaste monde” is the plenty of information in it. If you’re fascinated by sailors and ships, you will find your happiness for sure. I learned a few words too, such as “empech, scull, yardarm”. I appreciated that the author goes far in his depictions of sailing and historical context. Indeed, the Renaissance period and its land discoveries are well known but not that much of a book topic. The world wars are for example more written about. The maps were thus useful as they gave us an idea of how navigators perceived their world back at the time and where were our protagonists.
Most of the time the facts are given in a beautiful way. It especially marked me two times: firstly when Lison sees the ocean for the first time and thinks “It looks like nothing, that’s what I tell myself. It’s like a lung. Like the continuity of the sky, or its underside” and secondly, it’s when the brother and sister arrive in Brest:
“A few elegant figures, encased in their velvet corsets, rub shoulders with half-drunk sailors, children in rags, and merchants displaying their wares under makeshift awnings. The dripping adds to the general clamour, the drops bouncing off the cobblestones sounding like the chirping of invading insects. My head is spinning. I pull down my hood and cover my ears. Now that silence reigns in my head, when I look around me, I no longer think of a beehive, but of a maze of intestines. The belly of a fish being gutted. The knife of the sun has cut into the living belly of the city, and the rain is causing ochre blood to flow over the iridescent scales of the cobblestones.”
-Side characters-
I liked how side characters were written. Even when they briefly appear, we see that the author has imagined a whole lore behind them. Doucin and Carpe were my favourite ones: they embody the same paternal figure who’s nice with the protagonists but doesn’t get too involved in their life, they’re just here to support their friend when they need it. The historical figures were also unique and fun. I liked how frankly Lison was when she said Kerguelen was a fraud and that he, as many other colonisers, didn’t travel overseas to discover new continents but for fame, wealth and without an ounce of regret for the populations hurt.
Besides, characters can be ambivalent: Jobic is a loveful father but he doesn’t take care of his daughter’s opinion, Lison took the dream of her brother just because she wanted to stay close to him and Eliaz is attracted to the sea without even knowing why: “You're right. The ocean is a well of sorrow. The place where all human tears have been poured since the dawn of time. – Maybe that's it. Maybe it is a well of sorrow. But then I don't understand why you want to throw yourself into it.”
In addition though, subjects are delicately treated. For example, Ugenie’s rape is forshadowed many chapters before. The silence of the Cognée brothers makes us understand that something terrible happened and the character of Lachausse shows us that sexual predators can appear in the story.
-The form-
The retrospective aspect of the book didn’t bother me. I’m usually not a fan but it was well handled and fitted perfectly with the idea of explorator memoirs. The fact that the narrative alternated with her brother’s adventures was a great thing too. I allowed us to take a break while following the ‘official’ part of explorations.
I was surprised that Lison broke the fourth wall because it seemed obvious that she was the one writing her brother’s chapters but it was interesting. This chapter shows us the matter of Eliaz’s gaze for her.
However, I wasn’t fond of the spiritual part of the story. Firstly, the name “kingdom of sparkling hearts” seemed too childish for me. I know Lison grew up using that name but coming out of a 16 years old girl like the most serious thing felt a bit weird. Moreover, the storytelling around dead people living as nature elements and mental connection through bats didn’t affect me… The kelpman also looked too goofy for me to be touching.
-Adventures and ending-
I found the story too rushed, or at least too different to what Lison was implied at the beginning of the book: when Eliaz arrives at the Cannibal Island, we realise that Lison never took actions by herself and she never truly travelled or lived an adventure. She just got into a boat, drifted through the sea and ran aground an Island. It disappointed me a little because the first 250 pages described a real adventure but it stopped since Lison and the Cognée brothers were evicted from the Olifant.
What’s more, the whole relationship between the Cognée brothers and Lison made me uncomfortable. There are a lot of reasons for that. Firstly, Lison is a young girl with none love experience: she never had a lover before, she had her first periods a few months ago (btw she doesn’t bleed anymore after her first ones) and she straightly goes from ‘I think I love the Cognée brothers’ to having sex with them the next chapter. From the moment she’s in love with them, they don’t have a single conversation, they don’t talk about their feelings, they don’t kiss, they don’t speak about anything. Plus, I have no problem with polygamy but the Cognée brothers are twins. Older than Lison. You don’t sleep with two twins at the same time when you’re sixteen. Finally, making Lison pregnant wasn’t the best idea in my opinion, she’s still very young, it happened by accident and the father left before even knowing he had a child. I’m not even sure that Lison was happy about her love story as she’s completely silent and frozen when the boat rescues her.
One last thing about the ending: I guess it’s supposed to be a happy ending but it doesn’t look like it. At the beginning, Lison fights to escape her condition of woman: she doesn’t want to be stuck or work as a tailor: “I don’t want to be a tailor” but then becomes a mother at 16 and says “I'm going to settle down in a quiet corner and stay there. I'm going to look for some sewing work”. Her brother won’t achieve his dreams either as he joins her to live in a house in the countryside.
Overall, I have mixed feelings for this novel. The story is full of knowledge and ardour but the ending is too rushed. Anyways, the writing remains beautiful
PPS: Song recommendation: Little talks by Of monsters and men
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 23, 2025
J'avais de gros espoir au début du livre et la plume était intéressante même si l'histoire semblait avancer bien lentement.
J'aurais du comprendre que ça allait être aussi lent tout au long.
Moitié du livre environ je me dis: à enfin son aventure commence! Celle qui mérite le résumé du livre où "lison va forger sa propre légende jusqu'aux confins de l'océan indien"!
Mais non elle survit en se laissant balloter par les vagues. Pour une protagoniste elle ne fait pas grand chose. Et puis le traiter de légende c'est ridicule je vois bien qu'elle a créée sa propre histoire comme celles que son père lui racontait mais à part une poignée de personnages personne ne connais sont histoire.
Juste une énorme déception avec presque aucun suspens, une histoire peu intéressante et des personnages oubliables.
J'aurais du comprendre que ça allait être aussi lent tout au long.
Moitié du livre environ je me dis: à enfin son aventure commence! Celle qui mérite le résumé du livre où "lison va forger sa propre légende jusqu'aux confins de l'océan indien"!
Mais non elle survit en se laissant balloter par les vagues. Pour une protagoniste elle ne fait pas grand chose. Et puis le traiter de légende c'est ridicule je vois bien qu'elle a créée sa propre histoire comme celles que son père lui racontait mais à part une poignée de personnages personne ne connais sont histoire.
Juste une énorme déception avec presque aucun suspens, une histoire peu intéressante et des personnages oubliables.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews