OutboardCap’s Reviews > Les Hommes de bonne volonté - L'Intégrale 2 (Tomes 5 à 7): Les Superbes - Les Humbles - Recherche d'une Église > Status Update

Very interesting volume. You can see how the French socialist movement, and others will be broken by the looming great war. Already, Jerphanion has begun to suspect that the international socialist movement cannot stop a European war and that martial may even be a sign of health in a society, though he tries to banish the thought. I'm really excited to see how the War changes his politics.

The Champcenais plot gets better the more time I spend with it. I've been taking it slow.

It's interesting that we see the politics and business take a back seat to everything else. Aside from the abortion and catholic morals, we also get a neat generational view of the war of 1870, as well as another discussion of French Foreign policy, which has changed a lot since Vol 1 with the Anglo-French Alliance.

Volume 5 down, 22 left

Like I said, the more screen time everyone gets, the better their plots. Except Haverkamp, he hasn’t hit his stride yet. Sammécaud came into his own this volume. I spent this volume trying to think about the Meta plot and the collective experiences of all the characters. It’s a little hard to figure out what Romains is saying. I want to sit down and synthesize some notes to get this.

Reading five volumes back to back was a horrible idea. I’m going to take a break after this one.

At the same time, it is so information dense I’d feel like I forgot something if I took more than a few days off. The book is also so attached to its time and contemporary events. It isn’t a Time Capsule either.

Progress is slow here. This is a Haverkamp volume, a character I did not enjoy so much in his first outing. I like him more now, but he still isn't cool like Quinette.

Whereas the first four volumes had heavy discussions of the state of leftwing politics in France in 1908. Now we're getting discussions of church-state relations. I can also sense a Freemason-illuminati plot somewhere in the making.