98. A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT

Sebastian Japrisot 1994
Translated from French by Linda Coverdale

Refusing to believe that her fiance Manech is really dead, this mystery love story finds Mathilde Donnay relentlessly seeking the circumstances and details of his death, when along with four other soldiers they were left at the German border to die during the first World War. Although she is unable to walk, she is fearless, methodical and determined to seek out the truth no matter what, until slowly, over a period of years, through little clues here and there, the truth unfolds.

'Once upon a time, there were five French soldiers who had gone off to war, because that's the way of the world.' (opening line)

'She was sixteen when they first made love, one April afternoon, and swore to marry as soon as he came back from the war. She was seventeen when they told her he was lost. She cried a great deal, because women take such things hard, but she did not overdo it, because women don't give up easily, either.'(20)

'It has been a long time since anything whatsoever to do with this war could shock Mathilde... knowing as she does that war breeds only infamy, futility, and excrement... and that nothing grows on desolate battlefields but the weed of hypocrisy or the pathetic flower of derision... because derision is the ultimate defiance, the only way to laugh in the teeth of every misfortune.'(28)

'She paints flowers, only flowers. She loves white, black, passionate red, sky blue, soft beige. She has problems with yellows, but after all, so did Vincent, who greatly admired Millet. She will always see Millet's flowers as tender and cruel and full of life in the mists of time.'(68)

'Five bound soldiers, dragged all the way to the front-line trench and tossed over the barbed wire to the enemy-- and in the snow, no less! It was outlandish, it was simply one of those morbid and unfortunately not always unprejudiced tales that had flourished like weeds all through the war.'(113)

'This casket contains the story of one of my lives. And you see, I tell it in the third person, exactly as though I were someone else. Do you know why? Because I'm afraid and I'm ashamed of being only me and of not being able to get to the end of it.'(141)

'... you take what comes, when it comes, you do not struggle against the war, or against life, or against death, you pretend, and the only master of the world is time.'(172)

'The summer of '14 remains for Mathilde the summer of those first kisses, and first deceptions. In front of Benedicte and Mama, she and Manech work so hard at appearing innocent they seem practically retarded. They talk to each other only about silly things, or about nothing at all, going off adventuring with Catapult instead.'(199)

'Now that she's grown up, Mathilde would be willing to tell all, but her father turns down the offer, saying, "spare me your memories. What I like about this place are the mimosas and this tree with the sentimental triple M that hints at what my fathers-- for I'm not the only one-- cannot bear to imagine. And then they get used to it."'(204)

'...whenever men get together, it doesn't matter if they're thirty years old or fifty, they can't help it, they behave like children.'(246)

First Picador Edition:November 2004
327 pages
Book owned