Michel Déon (1919–2016)

Halfway through this poignant, often hilarious tale, the protagonist, Jean Arnaud, comes across a truth I wish I’d taken to heart at age seventeen, as he does. There’s no shame to being young, no crime to make mistakes or to give in to your enthusiasms.

Jean imbibes this lesson after reading Stendhal, who’d have enjoyed the young man’s amorous adventures and the gentle irony with which Déon tells of his growing up. But this picaresque novel also harks back to Henry Fielding’s rollicking eighteenth-century masterpiece, Tom Jones. Both begin with a foundling child of mysterious origins who fits no societal niche and will have to make his fortune through his gifts of character, which turn out to be considerable.

However, The Foundling Boy takes place in France between the world wars, not eighteenth-century England, and the particular atmosphere in which people try to recover from old wounds offers a perfect forum in which to observe how people enjoy life (or don’t). In this, the novel has a distinctly French sensibility, by which I mean that the characters who succeed are those who know better than to take themselves too seriously. I think this notion is what the French, at their best, have given Western civilization.

Once the basket bearing a newborn infant is left on a doorstep belonging to a childless couple, caretakers of a Norman estate, there’s little plot to speak of. But don’t worry. Episode quickly follows episode, and Jean gets into scrape after scrape, portrayed with wit, charm, and keen observation. Most of the story takes place in Normandy and Provence, so if you like France, or can imagine or have experienced the pleasures of either place—cider and ancient greenery in one; warm colors and aromatic herbs in the other—you’ll like this book.

Sometimes, the omniscient narrator takes time out to tell you who’s important to remember, and who isn’t, as if Déon were your mentor. The role fits, for practically everybody wants to mold Jean to his or her own purposes—for his own good, of course. His adoptive father wants him to be a gardener, like himself, and to stay close to home; a con man tries to teach him to be a con man, and roam the world; and Ernst, a German youth he meets on a bicycle trip to Italy, insists that fascism offers the only useful, honest path in life.

All this is ripe for satire, and Déon doesn’t miss a trick. Especially as a young boy, Jean has no experience with which to filter out the useful advice from noise or from what, to the reader, appears the counselor’s self-interest. Jean's not weak—far from it—just green, but that constantly gets him into trouble. And as he navigates through his difficulties, what’s personal to Jean is also political and social commentary about 1930s Europe, though he doesn’t always know that.

For instance, he can’t figure out why Ernst, who seems to laugh a lot and be good-natured, should take himself and his country so seriously, especially to spout hateful, vaguely frightening ideas from a book called Mein Kampf.
Originally published in 1975, The Foundling Boy is a classic in France, though only recently translated into English, as with its sequel, The Foundling’s War. Déon belongs to the Academie Française, but he’s now also part of my personal pantheon: a great writer I’d never heard of.… (més)

Quelle lourdeur, quels clichés, quel réac.
J'aurais voulu aimer ce livre conseillé par des amies lectrices, car elles avaient adoré le lire adolescentes.
C'est ce "ado" qui aurait dû me mettre la puce à l'oreille. Je peux imaginer, ado, apprécier ce livre, c'est plein d'aventures, plein de bons sentiments, de grands et nobles sentiments.
Beurk. De grands et nobles et réactionnaires sentiments... Les femmes sont comme ci, les hommes sont comme ça, les français sont ainsi, les arabes plutôt pas, et que je t'en ajoute des louches sur le sens du devoir, sur le courage, sur je ne sais quel autre grand et noble sentiment qui, à mon sens, donne une idée tellement fausse de notre expérience individuelle de la vie.
Je ne sais pas si c'est bien nécessaire de faire toute la liste de ce qui m'a fait grincer des dents dans ce livre... Bon allez, si, en bref: la justification de la violence faite au femme (pour lutter contre leur hystérie, vous comprenez bien?) ; l'utilisation de mots inutilement compliqués (sclérotique plutôt que blanc de l'oeil, sclérotique, vous y croyez, vous? Ou encore pléthore de termes nautiques super relous et inutiles, je veux dire, je suis prête à apprendre du vocabulaire, mais si je me lançais dans les bateaux, je ne crois pas que je me tournerais vers "les poneys sauvages" pour faire mon vocabulaire. Et d'autres mots encore, heureusement que j'ai une liseuse avec dico intégré, sinon j'aurais peut-être craqué) ; la justification de la violence, de la guerre, je cite "il n'est d'action que la guerre" ; cette idée tordue que pour être heureux il faut rester chez soi, dans son pays, épouser, genre, un(e) voisin(e), de peur d'être tout(e) perdu(e) sinon ; un peu de racisme discret mais présent, bien sûr. J'en passe sans doute.
Et comme si ça ne suffisait pas, ça se prend très au sérieux, avec plein de mystères, de renvois du style "mais nous verrons cela plus tard", ça me rappelle "rencontre avec X", émission d'espionnage sur France Inter qui m'a toujours horripilée par ce côté mystère à la noix.
Dommage, le sujet est sinon intéressant, un groupe d'amis traversant la deuxième guerre mondiale puis ses suites, au coeur de l'histoire, même si ça a un côté un peu artificiel (genre ils ont tous eu un rôle essentiel ou pas loin à jouer), mais tout ce ramassis de clichés et de réac... Too.much.… (més)