Les Thibault: Le Cahier gris

Les Thibault #1

by Roger Martin du Gard

Le cahier gris ("The Grey Notebook") opens in Paris around 1904. School officials have discovered a notebook containing messages between Jacques Thibault and a Protestant fellow schoolboy, Daniel de Fontanin. The notebooks give evidence of a passionate, but not evidently sexual, relationship between the two. Expecting that the notebook will be misinterpreted, the two run away to Marseille, intending to travel to North Africa by ship. Jacques's father Oscar Thibault, a stern Catholic grand bourgeois, dispatches his older son, Antoine, a medical student, to retrieve his younger brother. In Marseille and unable to find a ship that will accept them, Jacques and Daniel are separated. Daniel is taken in by an older woman, who seduces him. In Paris, Daniel's younger sister Jenny is seriously ill and his mother learns that her husband Jérôme's infidelities have included an affair with her cousin Noémie. Antoine visits the de Fontanins and concludes that Jenny is beyond medical help.

Genres: France, Roman

Kindle Edition

Published October 1, 2020

About the author

Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1937 "for the artistic power and truth with which he has depicted human conflict as well as some fundamental aspects of contemporary life in his novel cycle Les Thibault."

Roger Martin du Gard (23 March 1881 - 22 August 1958) was a French author and winner of the 1937 Nobel Prize for Literature. Trained as a paleographer and archivist, Martin du Gard brought to his works a spirit of objectivity and a scrupulous regard for details. For his concern with documentation and with the relationship of social reality to individual development, he has been linked with the realist and naturalist traditions of the 19th century. His major work was Les Thibault, a roman fleuve about the Thibault family, originally published as a series of eight novels. The story follows the fortunes of the two Thibault brothers, Antoine and Jacques, from their prosperous bourgeois upbringing, through the First World War, to their deaths. He also wrote a novel, Jean Barois, set in the historical context of the Dreyfus Affair.

During the Second World war he resided in Nice, where he prepared a novel, which remained unfinished (Souvenirs du lieutenant-colonel de Maumort); an English-language translation of this unfinished novel was published in 2000.

Roger Martin du Gard died in 1958 and was buried in the Cimiez Monastery Cemetery in Cimiez, a suburb of the city of Nice, France.

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Grey Notebook is a notepad in which Jacques – the younger son of the Thibault family – and his school friend wrote private messages to each other… And this notebook turned out to be a cause of so much trouble… 
Right away Roger Martin Du Gard throws us into the whirlpool of melodramatic events… Jacques and his friend are on the run… And there is a lot of commotion around their flight… Friend’s sister is dying of meningitis… The mysterious priest arrives and heals her using his extreme faith or some other mystical power…  

“Woman, I tell you There is no Evil! It’s you who bring it into being ‘and give it its baneful power – because you fear it, because you admit its existence.”

And now the schoolboys are in Marseille and they wish to sail for Africa… And the youngest Thibault is on fire… 

His eyes were aflame with rage against the school, the Abbé, the lycée, the principal, his father, society, the world’s injustice.

Whatever the young rebels get they always cry for more.

[Daniel Grenier · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bien moins poussiéreux que ce que je croyais. Court, efficace, véloce. Prose sobre, pas pompeuse pour deux sous. Les émois adolescents de Daniel et Jacques, aussi sérieux qu’une tragédie, font sourire et rouler les yeux, mais c’est par affection, par empathie. Donne très envie de lire la suite.

[Nepreading · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jamen, roligt ändå! Inte helt sympatiska karaktärer, men det känns som att det kanske är meningen. Språket ett hyfsat hinder men har förstått tillräckligt för att ändå vara nyfiken på och orolig för vad som ska hända, och för att himla med ögonen åt gossebarnen..

[Gilles Russeil · Rating 4 out of 5]

Premier tome de la saga "Les Thibault", ce texte vif, rapide, émouvant nous met dans les pas de deux gamins qui fuient leur famille pour mieux vivre leur amitié amoureuse fusionnelle. C'est beau et pur et on veut lire la suite

[Dolf van der Haven · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nobel Prize 🏆 in Literature 1937.
A surprisingly modern novel in its themes, excellently written. This story feels like the prelude to a saga, which means I will be reading the following six books as well.

[Els · Rating 4 out of 5]

Moving book, but it reminds me of Zola, and not in a good way. Exploration of doomed characters.