Malicroix

by Henri Bosco, Joyce Zonana (Translator)

Henri Bosco, like his contemporary Jean Giono, is one of the regional masters of modern French literature, a writer who dwells above all on the grandeur, beauty, and ferocious unpredictability of the natural world. Malicroix, set in the early nineteenth century, is widely considered to be Bosco’s greatest book. Here he invests a classic coming-of-age story with a wild, mythic glamour.

A nice young man, of stolidly unimaginative, good bourgeois stock, is surprised to inherit a house on an island in the Rhône, in the famously desolate and untamed region of the Camargue. The terms of his great-uncle’s will are even more surprising: the young man must take up solitary residence in the house for a full three months before he will be permitted to take possession of it. With only a taciturn shepherd and his dog for occasional company, he finds himself surrounded by the huge and turbulent river (always threatening to flood the island and surrounding countryside) and the wind, battering at his all-too-fragile house, shrieking from on high. And there is another condition of the will, a challenging task he must perform, even as others scheme to make his house their own. Only under threat can the young man come to terms with both his strange inheritance and himself.

Genres: Fiction, France, Classics, Historical Fiction, French Literature, Literature, Gothic

286 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1948

About the author

Henri Bosco was born in Avignon in 1888.

He was born of an Italian family from Cipressa, above San Remo, who had settled in Marseille, France, between 1837 and 1847. His father, Louis Bosco, was a stone-cutter before becoming a highly talented opera singer. His childhood and his youth were spent a few kilometers from Avignon, in the neighbourhood of Monclar, which was still in the country at that time. He studied classics at the Lycée d'Avignon, and took music for eight years at the Conservatory in Avignon. His university studies in Grenoble led to the successful completion of the Italian agrégation in 1912. In 1913, he was appointed to Philippeville, Algeria, where he taught classics.

First World War: H.Bosco fought in the Armée de l'Orient (Macedonia, Serbia, Albania). He was injured in 1915 and discharged in 1919.

From 1920 to 1930, he was seconded by the Institut Français de Naples. This period was very important in both intellectual and literary terms. He published his first book, "Pierre Lampédouze", in 1924. He also participated with R.Laurent-Vibert in the restoration of the Château de Lourmarin which would become a cultural foundation.

On July 16 1930, Henri Bosco married. From 1930 to 1931, he taught French and Italian in Bourg-en-Bresse.

Autumn 1931: He arrived in Rabat, Morocco, where he taught classics at the Lycée Gouraud (Hassan II). He was president of the Alliance Française in Morocco. In 1936 he founded the journal "Aguedal", that he edited until 1945. He contributed actively to intellectual life both in North Africa and in France. The influence of friends and the ordeal of war and defeat led Bosco to embark on a true initiation that directed his inner life toward a profound spiritual quest and ushered in a new period of original works that began with "L'Ane Culotte" (1937).

Henri Bosco retired in 1945, the year in which "Le Mas Théotime" received the Prix Renaudot, earning him renown. Subsequently he devoted himself to his literary career and published novels that attracted considerable attention ("Le Jardin d'Hyacinthe", "Malicroix", "Un Rameau de la Nuit", ...). He left Morocco permanently on April 9, 1955, after spending twenty-four of the richest and most prolific years of his life there.

He settled on the hill of Cimiez in Nice, in an old Provençal mas which soon became a Mecca of friendship and spiritual life. He travelled extensively giving lectures, but persistently continued to expand his work.

He frequently stayed in Lourmarin where, in 1947, he had acquired a bastidon isolated in the hills, a place of silence, daydreams, and meditation. From 1947, he was administrator of the R.Laurent-Vibert Foundation and gave much of his time and efforts to the brilliant intellectual, literary, and artistic activity of this place that was so dear to him.

Henri Bosco died in Nice in his eighty-seventh year. He is buried in Lourmarin, with Madeleine Bosco, who passed away in 1985.

His work was honoured with numerous prizes, including the "Grand Prix National des Lettres" in 1953 and the "Grand Prix de Littérature de l'Académie Française" in 1968.

Reviews

[S̶e̶a̶n̶ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Surprisingly dense in its themes and drenched in Gothic atmosphere, Malicroix tells the story of a young man identified only as Martial who inherits an island on the Rhône river from his great-uncle Cornélius Malicroix. Martial never met his uncle, though always wondered about him, and as the end of the male Malicroix line (indirectly through his mother), Martial was the old man’s only logical choice for inheritor of his strange and seemingly meager estate. As the tale unfurls through Martial’s narration, its initial relatively straightforward-seeming narrative stream begins to reveal its curvaceous tributaries. For one, the inheritance is not as simple as it first appears; there are, as they say, strings attached. And with the property comes Malicroix’s inscrutable ‘liege-man’ Balandran and his old dog Bréquillet, both of whom will have their significant parts to play.

So Martial moves into his uncle’s humble house—known as La Redousse—on the island, at first unsure of how long he’ll stay. For his part, Balandran provides silent, efficient service to his new master while also tending a flock of sheep and goats that graze a few hundred acres of severe, untillable land adjacent to the river. Martial explores the island in cinematic scenes offering a deeply immersive reading experience. It is a foreign place to him, for he hails from an idyllic region where his family members live in several homes on their ancestral property. A botanist, Martial is used to spending his days studying plants in his greenhouse, among the prolific gardens and small orchards that his family tends. This island he has arrived on could not be more different from his homeland. And so the novel draws much of its strength from the hinge in contrast between the two locales. The weather on the river is savage and often frightening, subject to the brutal whims of nature, which in turn bring squalls of heavy rain followed by a long period of seemingly endless wind. And yet over time this place rewards Martial’s patience with a sublimity deeper than he’s ever experienced.

Gradually the story—and the island itself—become imbued with a fetid air of mystery. At times Martial wanders in a noxious state of waking dreams or hallucinations. The Malicroix family notaire Dromiols—responsible for the legal proceedings of the inheritance—arises as the larger-than-life villain: the precision of his courteous formalities and the impeccable state of his outward appearance belie the cunning and ruthless nature rippling with menace below the surface. He is a dangerous man, but one who respects the law above all else. His assistant Uncle Rat is no less complex in his own machinations. Will he help Martial or only do his master’s bidding? A battle of wills over the legal right to the island is set to rage.

The exposition is protracted—revelations arrive with no great haste, meted out through the mist hanging over the island between lengthy passages describing the region’s peculiar natural characteristics, at times even hinting at the supernatural. Martial himself spends a lot of time waiting in an ever-watchful state. It is a curious novel. For its relative brevity, it offers a thick sheaf of themes: love of family (in all its ambiguity), lineage, loyalty, respect, justice, revenge, regret, redemption, love won and lost, self-exploration, maturation, human connection to other animals, the power of nature. It reminded me at times of Julien Gracq’s novels, and both Gracq and Bosco shared an affinity for (and were influenced by) Edgar Allan Poe. That should tell you enough as to whether it’s a book you might enjoy. As for me, it’s a strong contender for favorite read of the year.

[Nick Grammos · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a curious book. I've not read anything like it. A mid 20thC novel written in a style that felt like a French translation of Wuthering Heights. Instead of the moors of Yorhshire, we are in the Carmauge, the Rhone River delta of southern France. A wild wetland area where our narrator is summoned to take up an inheritance. He is the last Malicroix. His great uncle died and left him his estate. But he can't receive the inheritance until he spends three continuous months on the island estate. The Malicroix were a wild family, unlike our narrator who was raised on pleasant fertile agrarian hills with his pleasant, polite level-headed family: the Megrements. Pages and pages describe the Megrement family as a clan defined by like minded pleasantness. But he has to prove he has some of that crazy Malicroix blood in him. So in a sense, this book is an examination of our natures, where we belong and what defines us. Set in the early decades of the 19thC, everyone in the book exists in a relationship with nature; the most prominent example of nature and our natures is the wild side in the Carmauge, a harsh, windswept rain sodden, fiercely hot and mysterious place, the river all around and always dark, unyielding, at times impenetrable and isolating. Everyone is harsh, toughened by the hardness of the landscape. Our narrator, through a poetic language full of imagery, interior reflection and willpower comes of age in those three moths while exposed to dangers he'd never imagined in his dreamy hillside homeland. It's a lot of fun, really. Never heard of Henri Bosco. Pleased to have been lent this book by a friend.

[Ken]

Reads like a 19th century piece. Lush prose to match the author's preoccupation with nature, weather, and omnipresent rain on this remote island in the middle of the Rhone. Young man must pass a test, as regards survival "alone" on this island, and not everyone has his best interests at heart.

At times gorgeous and engaging, at times ponderous and repetitive, but at least the two are mixed evenly. A far cry from the shorter, more straightforward narrative of The Child and the River. A near cry, though, with that book's preoccupation with rivers. Clearly Bosco was a river guy.

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a very atmospheric, moody, dare I say gothic (?) book about a strange inheritance and an even stranger island. I would save it for a dark and stormy night. Despite it's shorter page count, it's a fairly dense and slow burn read, but that really suits the tone of the story.

I had a copy of this from the publisher through Edelweiss; it came out in this edition on April 7, 2020.

[Tony · Rating 2 out of 5]

This novel had one of my favorite setups: a will left by an obscure and idiosyncratic relative with peculiar conditions for the protagonist-beneficiary.

The story here is that Martial (our protagonist) inherits a small island in the Rhône, with a dwelling and some livestock. The setting is inhospitable. The condition, though, is that Martial must not leave the island for three months, after which he will be given a trial. The particulars (excluding the trial) were set forth in a promising dialogue with a lawyer.

The story turned then, firstly contemplative. Martial pondered the nature of solitude: No two times of solitude are alike for we are never alone in the same way. What followed were pages upon pages of more pondering:

At the same time I was moving forward within myself, and the now invisible outside world was being replaced by another world that I was perceiving. It seemed to emanate from within me, to be built there and to be recomposing, with the realities that had become inaccessible to me, an interior double of everything the snow's vertigo had obscured.

There was some action later, but told in a surreal way, tending to gothic.

Martial performs the trial, but I couldn't tell you what it was.

[Bill Hsu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hard for me to resist this after reading S̶e̶a̶n̶'s resplendent review, even though I had qualms about some aspects. It unfolds very slowly, and is a bit cluttered with descriptive detail and domestic minutiae for my taste. But the language was a pleasure especially in the early sections, and Martial's arrival and first days on the island were quite unsettling and dream-like. I'm not sure I followed all the motivations and machinations that led up to the final ritual on the river, but I cared enough about Martial and his quest to ride through the murky end.

[Bbrown · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've read some peculiar books this year, with Huysmans' Against Nature and Fleur Jaeggy's The Water Statues coming to mind, but in its own way Henri Bosco's Malicroix is just as curious. Its protagonist and narrator lives so much in his own mind that, until well into the novel, it was difficult for me to parse whether the events he described were actually happening or whether they were just a product of his imagination. The book is not dreamlike, however, but rather everything seems unnaturally detailed, every word and movement containing multitudes, and almost mythical significance. Even this description is not quite right. It's hard to put into words the mood that pervades Malicroix, but it is unique and enchanting, with an undercurrent of darkness. Regardless of the story's reality, it is beautifully written, the prose alone justifying this journey cloaked in mist and mystery.

The story opens with Martial, the narrator, receiving an unexpected inheritance from his late great uncle Cornelius de Malicroix. Though the two have never met, Martial believes himself to have a profound connection to the deceased, borne of them sharing the same blood, Martial being the last of the Malicroix line. Against the advice of his relatives he leaves the paradisiacal gardens of his childhood for an isolated house on a river island. Strange things occur, like him waking up to a breakfast prepared for him even though he hasn't seen anyone else in the house, but Martial takes it all in stride, and he soon comes to learn that his companions on the island are the silent shepherd Balandran and his dog Brequillet. Eventually Martial is told the terms of Malicroix's will, which require that he remain on the island for three months to receive the estate, at which time an additional codicil will be revealed. This information is communicated to Martial by Malicroix family notaire Dromiols, a huge figure that Martial finds intimidating and who he believes is after his inheritance. Accompanying Dromiols is Uncle Rat, a character mysterious to the last.

Even when I was more than half way through Malicroix, I was not the least bit confident I knew what was actually occurring in the story. Was there really a connection between Martial and Cornelius, or was it all a figment of the former’s imagination? Did he really feel drawn to the island, or was that merely him justifying his desire for a romanticized adventure? Was Dromoils actually against him, a rival for the island, or was Martial projecting his discomfort onto the massive stranger? Even something as simple as Martial taking a walk outside was up to interpretation, did he get lost in the snowstorm, or did he have a hallucinogenic journey to the stars, returning only after making a bargain with the spirit of an ancestor? After he falls ill with fever, everything he experiences feels even more uncertain. Eventually, though, the story coalesces, and you can say with some confidence what has actually happened and what is currently going on. However, even when you’ve gotten your bearings, the world of Malicroix is still strange, a place apart from our reality where the rich inner lives of people seem to communicate on a level higher than mere speech can hope to achieve.

While the plot of Malicroix comes into focus by the end of the book, it’s not the work’s main virtue. That distinction lies with the book’s aforementioned mood and Bosco’s superlative prose.

The stasis of night seems to have built this silence. Dizzying edifice, it raises its invisible towers vault by vault toward the night sky, above the still-anxious soul. The lightest shudder causes its frail walls to quake. Like a fragile thought, the mysterious castle waivers from base to precarious peak before dissolving into the dark from which its fleeting form had emerged like a troubling wonder.

I think the writing of Malicroix is top-notch, but if you found this passage overwritten then Bosco’s prose may not be for you, in which case this book is probably one you should avoid. Even as a reader that enjoyed this writing, Malicroix took me a lot of time and effort to get through, with the dense prose being a big contributing factor to why reading this one posed a challenge. Regardless of whether the prose is to your taste, I think it’s beyond question that Joyce Zonana has done an amazing job translating this volume.

This is not a long book, but to read it is a commitment. Think of it less like a story, and more like a lengthy prose poem. Its strange plot comes together, but never feels essential, instead it’s secondary to the musings of its protagonist, and his observations about the land he inhabits and the strange characters rife with symbolism with which he interacts. I think most people will appreciate the mood engendered by Malicroix, but I can’t say with confidence whether most will enjoy the prose. Definitely read a sample before you pick up a copy. As someone that did enjoy Bosco’s writing, I give this one a 3.5/5, rounding up.

[James Murphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

France's Rhone River is almost a character in Malicroix. The setting is the Camargue region where the river flows into the Mediterranean. It's a wetlands area covering the Rhone delta. Some of it is cultivated but large tracts of it are wild and largely uninhabited except for birds and marsh grasses and wind.

It's to this section of the Rhone that our protagonist, Martial, travels to begin the novel. He's inherited an island in the river from an uncle recently deceased. The terms of his inheritance are that he must take up residence in the isolated house on the wild island for 3 months. During his vigilant and meditative stay there he's assisted at first only by a shepherd/servant. But he soon learns he has an adversary in Dromiols, the notary who's represented the family and the deceased uncle for years. Dromiols would like to see Martial fail so the island can be claimed by historical rivals of the family.

That good versus bad faceoff almost reminiscent of an American western (the rival family, the Rambards, are cowherds in opposition to the sheepherding Malicroix) is only the framework for what struck me as a kind of immersion into the classical world. It's as if something is barely hidden, waiting to be revealed. It has a pastoral feel to it, for one thing. Martial becomes deeply involved with the nature of island and river. We later learn he developed this interest from his family who're so attentive to the seasons and plant and animal life that Bosco's prose almost indicates they're necessary to it, responsible for nature's orderly progression. When we finally meet Martial's network of aunts, uncles, and cousins we're struck by how divine-like Bosco has structured their characters in the family seat high on a hill. Especially on the river, it's easy to see characters and this work as representing more than their appearance. Dromiols, for instance, may be seen as more than a notary. And Anne Madeleine, the young woman who comes to help Martial, may be more than a pretty face. And there's a ferryman, too, suggesting the Rhone may stand for a river in another, nether region.

This thinking may be sound. It may not be. I began the book expecting to find these kinds of elements (we need a good dose of heroic myth to inspire us these days). I think the novel contains enough allusive material in its flow that I couldn't help but notice. One doesn't have to use or interpret the material seen. But I don't think the allusions are there by accident. Bosco himself says:
"...I had crossed the water of an imaginary river, one night, outside of time, mingling my
everyday life with the figures of a half dream. What I had done, I must have done; what
I had seen, I must have seen--but by way of inexplicable states of soul, in that nether land
between the worlds."
This, one of the keys to the novel, illustrates the kind of novel it is. Still, I don't think my understanding is complete. I like that because I have a reason to dive into this interesting novel again.

[Esdaile · Rating 4 out of 5]

C'est d'une ironie je trouve que la mystique qui s'appelait "Blut und Boden" et qui était propagée par la regime national-socialiste, a trouvé dans le litterature sans doute les plus grands réprésentants dans la litterature francaise plutot que dans la litterature allemande. On pense par example, à Henri Bosco et Jean Giono, deux écrivains très semblables. Ce roman-ci qui Henri Bosco lui-même appellé son chef d'ouevre, est plein des sentiments des symboles et de l'atmosphère de la terre, de Provence. Surtout, on écrit avec le sang, on agit comme mebre d'une race. C'est le sang et la terre qui determine qui nous sont et comment nous agissons. On pense à Kipling (sang) et Bronte (terre) mais dans ce roman il s'agit du sang et de la terre.

Pascal Mégremut hérite de façon inespérée de son grand oncle Cornélius Malicroix un île au milieu du Rhône; en plus, une maison sur l'île et une autre maison sur les rives. Il accept l'héritage, qui porte ppourtant une condition remarkable et même sinistre. Il faut qu'il y reste pendant 3 mois et ne quitte pas l'isle pendant ce temps, sous peine de perdre sudite heritage, qui serait dans le cas qu'il quitte l'ile avant le fin des trois mois, non-valable.
Le sang fougueux des Malicroix se révélera petit à petit, c'est le sang "Heathcliff", les sang de ses ancetres de la Camargue. Oui c'est le sang qui chante et bien qu'on n'admette pas,et bien que l'auteur lui-même ne l'admet pas, c'est une affirnmation des droits de sol, un roman profondement raciale et je le dis dans tout le sens positif du mot qui pour moi il posède.
Il s'agit aussi d'un roman mystique plein des symboles religieuses.
Vengeance, pouvoir des esprits, influence mythique de la nature ( cette fois le Rhône) sentiments romantiques. Henri Bosco exige beaucoup de son lecteur-il peint l'ennui de la nature en écrivant lui même des passages répetetives et longues dans les quelles il se passent très peu de chose. C'est un roman de la solitude, et la solitude et la silence sont des étâts d'âme qui n'existent quasiment plus dans la vie moderne. En effet il s'agit ici d'un roman pas moderne. Le symbolisme poutr moi est peut-être de trop dans le sense que j'arrive avec de la difficulté à croire le comportement ou les évenements. Surtout, que le notaire, une force d'un homme vaguement diabolique, assite à une messe sur un bac au Rhône, mais donné que le francais ne soit pas très facile et que je ne suis pas francais, c'est possible, probable même, qu'il y avait des évenements et éxplications qui m'ont échappé.
Un roman étrange, mystique, très bien écrit, mais non pas tout à fait convaincant comme histoire. Mais c'est ma faute peut-être? Et il est si bien fait qu'il vaut la peine de le relire un jour a fin de trouver les sécrets qui restent cachées parmi les ronces verbaux du récit mystique d'Henri Bosco.

[Samuel Moss · Rating 5 out of 5]

A finger pointing at a finger pointing at a finger pointing at the moon.

[Andy Weston · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've had this on my tbr list for sometime, and the recent reprint from NYRB gave me the push I needed.
Set in the early 19th century in rural France and written in 1948, Bosco's story concerns a remote island property, bequeathed to a young man, Martial, by his great uncle whom he has never met. The uncle's will demands that Martial remain in the house on the island for three months to gain legal control of it. Even getting to it is an ordeal, but in doing so, Martial meets the caretaker Balandran, who it seems he has also inherited. Tribulations with notary await, along with his officious clerk. Its a straightforward plot, but the real enjoyment is in the setting, and the characters. The solitude of the ramshackle property, and its custodian and his dog, grow on city dweller Martial. Bosco writes on the haunting wilds of the island with a gothic-dipped pen, describing the scares that await someone used to a different life wonderfully, and with a suggestion of the supernatural spooned and stirred, in just the right dose.

[Christine · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book reminds me a bit of Poe’s Usher, though it is far more focused on the natural world than Poe. The sense of place in the novel is wonderful.

[path · Rating 4 out of 5]

A barely accessible island in the middle of the Rhône, isolated by the rapid and turbulent river currents, socked in by snow. The island is barely inhabited except by a few people. Yet it is full of sounds, shades, sounds, memories, spirits. The house that the narrator receives on this island is The Redousse (The Redoubt) a place to which the narrator goes at the request of his now-deceased uncle and which becomes a retreat into transformative solitude.

Presence in absence is a theme that stood out for me. Our narrator, Martial, goes to the island to live in The Redousse for three months. There are no books, no music, and few people, leaving Martial in solitude. During that time, his only regular companion is a shepherd, Balandran, who quietly slips in and out of the house, preparing meals and tending the fireplace. His presence is known by the consequence of his actions more than by seeing or hearing him. He is present but absent. More present to Martial are the shades of people, perhaps his uncle, perhaps others who he senses in the dark of the house, sitting in chairs, lying in the bed but that he never hears or sees. The nights are filled with footsteps and murmurs just beyond the walls of the house and outside of the field of vision. These signs, which may very well be imagined, become the focus of Martial’s days and nights. It is a multitudinous solitude, full of dark and empty spaces and stretches of time that are inhabited by the present absence of those who were. It is also a space that is filled by the rain, wind, snow, air, and scents which leave their own marks on Martial.

The absent presences of the island is starkly contrasted by what I see as the present absences that Martial experiences upon returning to the mainland. He comes from a loving, large family that is delighted to see him again. But though those scenes are filled with people and interactions they lack the depth of impact of the island. The people leave fewer marks and are less transformative. They are abundantly present, in the same room, at the same event, talking, clasping hands, embracing but also distant and closed, absent despite their presence.

As someone who enjoys solitude there is something that rings true about the reflections in this book. My solitude is not lonely, often it is full and fulfilling. Occasionally it is transformative. I thought that Bosco captured the contradictory quality of solitude very nicely.

There’s stuff that happens in the book, but I couldn’t honestly tell you with any certainty what the plot was. After a while it seemed a little beside the point to me. Fulfillment of last wishes, loyalty, maybe revenge (?) are all part of the book, but they seem incidental to the poetic reflections on solitude, transformation, and the fullness of a world that is easy to miss because it is obscured by all of the other stuff that place around ourselves.

[Ben Samson · Rating 3 out of 5]

What exactly this “is” and is trying to do is a little tough to quantify. It seems to be mostly interested in generating rich, pea soup thick atmosphere which it manages to great effect. It also captures very nicely the way the mind wanders and snowballs between vaguely related thoughts when one is completely isolated with no external stimulus at all. Within that is found some very accomplished and beautiful writing.

Boscos command of environmental and weather based imagery and atmosphere combined with a great sense for the subtly uncanny (nature as depicted in this book is unknowable and frightening but so starkly beautiful) is remarkably similar in style to the weird fiction writer Algernon Blackwood. The tension in the air at the onset of a storm, the milky quality of light coming through mist, the way fast flowing rivers appear both threatening and sensuous (rivers freak this guy the fuck out, I was keeping a list of all the ways in which he makes rivers sound scary but it quickly became apparent that would have had to become the whole review) , the crystalline quality of strong wind and much much more is rendered with incredible tactility and vividness.

It is not Gothic fiction but it certainly teeters right on the brink of that and has some fun threatening to topple over into it at any given moment. It has simpering grotesques in the characters of Maître Droimols and Uncle Rat that are straight out of Dickens, although far less interesting and well furnished psychologically than any of his characters, the lackadaisical, meandering philosophy found in the fiction of Sartre (which makes sense given that Bosco was a contemporary of his) and a kind of generally morose, Byronic sort of tone but I couldn’t tell you what it’s actually trying to get at at all beyond just identifying the many elements of style present here. It’s concerns really do seem to be primarily aesthetic which I would love to be able to wholeheartedly endorse but the whole thing does wind up feeling just a little bit “light” to me like a very pretty and ornate faberge egg with very little inside it. A nice book to just sort of luxuriate in though which counts for a lot and as a generally meditative experience you could do far worse.
FIN.

[sean · Rating 4 out of 5]

As much as I would love to spend a few hours writing about this book, it's exam season and the marking is beginning to pile up. But I'm amazed that Bosco is not more popular in English—this is a beautiful book that pays sensitive attention to the boundary between consciousness and the natural world. Kind of like a mystical, phenomenological companion to Walden, with less self-importance. Really great.

[Plateresca · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was probably the best read of the year for me! I loved everything about it.

The best part was when I was sitting in front of the fireplace, and it was raining outside, and I was reading about how the protagonist was sitting in front of a fireplace, and it was raining outside :)

I loved the dreamy atmosphere, the descriptions of nature, the implied paganism, the mystery. Some scenes were so creepy! So this was also one of the scariest reads of the year for me.

A slim volume, very peculiar, very memorable.

[Elderberrywine · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a wild ride. Gothic mysticism is the best way to describe it, I guess. Although I was unfamiliar with the French writer, he had been nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature four times, so there's that.

The book opens in a straightforward way with a pleasant young man being summoned to the estate of his recently deceased great-uncle. He is dropped off by carriage in a desolate expanse of fields and wetlands where he is met by a taciturn shepherd sent to escort him to his uncle's former residence. Instead of the foreboding manor house though, it is a simple one room residence on an island in the middle of the Rhone River. (The manor house is on the other side of the river. We don't get there until later.) In short order, his uncle's executor, the wonderfully named Dromiols, and his accomplice, Uncle Rat, arrive to lay out the terms of his uncle's will. A vast estate, including this island and all the surrounding area, is to be his provided that he live in the hut, with only the shepherd to provide for him, for three months alone. If he leaves for any reason, it all falls into Dromiols' hands. And he didn't even think to bring a book. Also there is one other little thing, but he's got to do this first.

Sounds basic Gothic setup, right? But it so is not. There are storms beyond belief, and hallucinations, and out-of-body experiences galore. As a matter of fact, once he started to write so vividly about the river, it finally dawned on me that this is an actual place, and I checked it out. It is the Camargue region of France where the Rhone comes down from the Alps into the Mediterranean, and is still just as empty and wild today. Wild horses? Flamingos? I had NO idea.

So good. Just let it wash over you.

[Yuri Sharon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This may not be a book for everyone, but it impressed me. Its solid intellectual clout has a presence, a density, a weight that creates its own gravity, drawing you in to read on when “nothing”, ostensibly, is happening.
It is said that no man is an island, but Martial, the narrator, and his great-uncle before him, aspire to that state to thereby gain a presence that can step beyond itself. Their island, near the mouth of the Rhone, in the early years of the 19th century, is their means to withstand the ferocious rush of storm winds, tempests and the river rush of the world.
Bosco’s descriptions (excellently translated) of this wild natural world – of clouds, winds, skies, river, rain, forest, light and shadow, of seasons – guide the reader into that often confronting place. It is a place in which the narrator (and the reader) are effectively imprisoned in order to attain understanding through solitude.
In the world Bosco engenders, the natural and supernatural are interwoven – places and people are haunted. Sometimes people become their own ghosts, haunting themselves.
If the novel seems challenging – persist, it will reward you.

[Taylor Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

A small masterpiece. Evocative, tranquil, curious, haunting. There is hardly a segment, a chapter, a page that does not in swirling eddies of language a bristling image paint. This is the kind of writing for which Nobels might be given.

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5
Martial, a young, sensible bourgeois man, inherits his great uncle's estate, in a desolate island surrounded by the unforgiving forces of nature.
Martial's inheritance comes a surprise, his great uncle Corenelius from the Malicroix bloodline, Martial his last living relative. The Malicroix clan are infamous for their strong and wild nature. Martial is seen as belonging instead to the Megremut family, a gentle, placid, amiable family, who encourage Martial to disregard the few drops of Malicroix blood within him. But this blood, no matter how faint, serves as a dark and powerful piece of Martial, one he cannot ignore as the events of the story unfold.
Martial travels to the solitary island and learns of surprising elements to his great uncle's will. He must take up residence in his house for three months in order to gain full possession of it. Strange and ambiguous characters begin to crawl out of the woodwork as Martial begins to live out the coldest months of the year in his new, desolate estate.
This story was so much fun, a gothic mystery thriller. It was full of gothic tropes that I loved, but the author very cleverly subverts a lot of the initial overtly gothic themes, and more unexpected layers unveil themself the deeper the story goes.
The very physical trial that Martial must go through is happening in parallel to the internal conflict of self and belonging, as Martial questions how much of a Malicroix he truly is. How far can he turn his back on being a Megremut? Can he settle within these two opposing ideas of the self he wrestles with?
A lot of this novel blurs the line between reality and unreality, body and soul, dreams and consciousness. Characters on the island are these hovering ghostly presence that seem to haunt the area, and Martial himself. There also almost feels like there are some magical realism elements to the writing. And the writing itself is gorgeous, just lush in its descriptions of nature and place, so atmospheric and sweeping, and the moments of Martial's introspection are really well done.
This was just a blast to read.

[star de l’Europe · Rating 1 out of 5]

6 mois à finir le livre trop de description de la nature c’est nul

[Rex · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had never heard of Henri Bosco two years ago. But from my first read-through, I knew Malicroix would take its place among my favorite novels. Not that I fully understand it—much is elusive, which for me is part of its appeal. To read Malicroix is to step into a dream. This dream is more Jung than Freud, full of archetypes and ancient symbols in the effortless synthesis of Christian and pagan Bosco associated with Provence. But there is something even older at work here; it seems at times as if the earth and the wind and the river and the stars are dreaming in this dream, participating in its creation. I hope to enjoy sitting down with Malicroix many evenings to come.

(And someday I will write a fuller review.)

[Daniel Polansky]

A well-meaning but unformed youth finds adventure, himself while house-sitting the shack of a deceased misanthrophic kinsmen. Kinda like if Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote a Gothic romance, but you know, French. I thought it was lovely and weird and charming.

[Scott Bielinski · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very weird book. And I loved it. Some really beautiful insights into the human condition, especially around isolation and loneliness. Bosco combines his existential interests with a thick, Gothic atmosphere and ethereal, lyrical, and poetic prose, making Malicroix an interesting and arresting read, albeit a frustrating and, more often than not, opaque one. Therefore, my rating is more a reflection of my own enjoyment of the book than it is of the quality of the book. I'm not quite sure what to make of Malicroix. I was captivated by it, nonetheless.

"The stasis of night seems to have built this silence. Dizzying edifice, it raises its invisible towers vault by vault toward the night sky, above the still-anxious soul . . . The absence of sounds leaves space completely empty, and in silence the sensation of vastness, depth, and boundlessness possesses us. That sensation pervaded me, and for several moments I was one with the grandeur of nighttime." (88)

"That was all he said, but I understood. Invisibly, like Balandran, Bréquillet had followed me through the night in the snow. For him, as for Balandran, to know me was to love me - for true knowing is entirely love. And I, who knew them poorly, felt them both, bristly and uncouth, beside my now tender heart. But I did not know how to speak of the tenderness moving through the weak heart they no longer doubted, but which still hesitated to answer the call of a bitter life." (138)

"Repentance, with its dark beach, was slowly disappearing, and, between us and the shore, the river rolled ominously, in one livid flow. We returned silently to La Redousse, where the warmth of the fire, peaceful, reassuring, would bathe us in its glow, often until dawn. Fire brings souls together, and we took pleasure in it." (231)

[A.S. Ember · Rating 4 out of 5]

The novel is so deeply meditative and introspective that often it comes across as almost ridiculous - but then, the language (even in translation) is so rich and the scenes so vivid, it doesn't. Don't we all feel, sometimes, that the whole world is wrapped up in an image, a silence, (the size of a foot), a memory? If not, this novel will effect it. It's strikingly unique: extremely dramatic, profoundly mundane, deeply poetic.

[JCP]

‘For when we meet someone new, we feel we are called into question, and in order to appraise the other precisely, we assess ourselves by the other’s worth, as fairly as possible.‘

[Jeffrey · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved the detailed and powerful descriptions of natural scenery and flira and fauna. The terrifying description of a storm and the telling of a myth/ family history tale about a bull are 2 major highlights for me. I was not so drawn into the internal descriptions of the narrator's mind as they seemed to be too drawn out for my tastes.

The atmosphere was 5/5
The way some portions of the story was told was 3/5.

Very interesting and will quite possibly revisit to try to piece together some of the plot points more fully.

[Tom Kubina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hutné atmosférické vyprávění, kterému se daří nechávat vás v nejistotě ze spousty nevyřčených věcí, aby vám zároveň na tisíc různých způsobů vylíčilo, jak ta řeka kolem ostrova pořád teče. Stačí se ponořit a strávit s hrdinou tři zimní měsíce na pustém ostrově a zároveň se nenudit.

[Bonnie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good gothic tale with a bit too much lyric description at times. Why do these people always run around at night?

[Cateline · Rating 3 out of 5]

I hardly know what to rate Malicroix. I was attracted by someone’s remark somewhere that Bosco’s prose was in line with Faulkner. Well, that’s all it took to incite me to purchase.

I do believe Bosco out-Faulknered Faulkner! Verrry slow (and I usually relish slow) and descriptive almost to the point of irritation. I finally made it through the first half where the story line became more apparent. Perhaps because I kept procrastinating my reading over a few weeks, I somehow lost part of the reasoning for the epic trial by river near the end, but I found the ending a bit flat and confusing. It should be re-read. Maybe next year.