Haunting,
magical, scary, heart-wrenching, difficult at times... What else
should I say in preface to telling you I loved this book? A nice
hard copy for my personal library would be in order. That being said
I am not sure I have a friend to recommend it to because it starts so
difficultly. I myself may not have stuck with it if it had not been a
book club choice - and I am very much against being in a club if you
aren't prepared to make yourself read all of the selections. However,
after re-starting at least twice, it was very much worth it.
How
could you not fall in love with a book that begins thus:
“Once upon a time, there were five French soldiers who had gone off to war, because that's the way of the world.
The first soldier, who in his youth had been a cheerful, adventurous lad, wore around his neck an identification tag marked 2124, the number assigned to him at a recruiting office in the department of Seine. On his feet were boots taken from a dead German, boots that sank into the mud of trench after trench as he plodded through the godforsaken maze leading to the front lines.”
The
engagement was long indeed. Ten years (1917-1927) spans the time
wheel-chair bound beautiful Mathilde searches for her lost fiance,
Manech. The book begins with five French soldiers of WW I being sent
to the front in lieu of execution for shooting themselves in attempts
to get out of the fighting. They are put out into the space between
the French and German lines knowing it is unlikely that they will
survive. Before they are sent out they are each allowed to dictate a
letter home. The next day when the French advance they do indeed find
five bodies. From there the reader is spun into multiple webs of
stories surrounding the five men and their respective wives and
lovers. The women receiving the letters were told by the military
that their husbands and lovers were killed in the line of duty. Some
of the letters contained coded messages. Some of the women try to
find out exactly what happened, how their men died, and Mathilde is
one of these. Over the ten years she investigates and puts many
pieces together to try to find out what really happened.
The
characters who cross Mathilde's path and those who's lives intertwine
the other women are so colorful it was a joy to travel a bit with
each of them. I think I love Mathilde because she is dedicated to
truth, always, no matter what (as I tend to be) and it helps that she
has many cats whom she loves. She also is an artist and dotes on her
parents and care givers as they do her. Her quest begins in earnest
when she reconnoiters with a dying Sergeant Esperanza who tells her
what he knows and gives her copies of all the mens letters and a
picture of the five men. It is after reading all the letters and
making notes of what Esperanza told her that she begins to believe in
earnest that Manech is not dead.
The
quest with Mathilde is what keeps you reading, there is sadness and
disappointment but there is beauty and fun also. There is an avenging
prostitute, a colorful detective, and a supposedly dead motorcycle
riding soldier who cannot stop riding for long, a grieving godmother,
to name only a few of the great characters. I need to read this book
again.
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