As the title implies, L'Occupation américaine is a coming of age novel that takes place against the backdrop of the American "occupation" in France. To come to a fuller understanding of the novel it's worth noting that it was written, or at least published, a few years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. I didn't entirely take that into account until I reached the end of the book, where the Americans leave France due to the machinations of "Charlie." You know, that guy that founded the fifth republic, i.e., present-day France.

"Ainsi il se trouvait que les US rentraient au home. Mais à vrai dire le home était devenu le monde entier." (p. 209)

Le monde entier? Aanschouw de jaren 1900-1950, from 1949, a book more or less contemporary with the period in which the novel takes place, put it thus: “At the beginning of the century Europe dominated the world. Now the power swifted to the hands of the United States of America and the Soviet Union. Will their decisions decide the future of our continent?” A spread of subtle and less subtle hints like this throughout the novel make it clear that it's not just set in the 1950s, but that it criticizes modernity in the post-Berlin Wall, possibly pre-9/11 world.

America is presented as a corrupting influence in the form of modernity. Drunkards, drug users, consumerism, vapidity, it's all there. With alluring neon lights and fake cleanliness. Old car wrecks, a symbol of consumerism, figuratively and literally start to litter the novel's world. Le monde entier est une poubelle. (Yours truly duly pointed out that the whole world is a trashcan. — This is how the novel translated English phrases inline.) America beckons Patrick Carrion, the unsympathetic protagonist, away from his French pastoral life.

The book is marked by a dark melancholic undertone. English expressions are explained between parentheses, but there's a kind of irony in the slight oddities bordering on mistranslations that I can't quite put my finger on, except that I occasionally found it quite amusing. Unfortunately I can't shake the feeling that I'm missing some deeper meaning behind it, but perhaps it's little more than the conflict between past and future, in this case represented by French and English, coupled with some kind of general commentary on the futility of life.

It wasn't a bad read, even if it was occasionally a bit too dark and negative in demeanor for my taste. I'll probably check out other books by the same author. ( )