Felled by a summer cold, I wanted something that would pull me along, and this was just right. Described on the back as a “French Huckleberry Finn,” this is a pleasant fairy-tale like story (with mysterious Gypsies, because it’s French, though these are perhaps more than usually cruel) about a boy who goes on an adventure and ends up living on the river for a spell. It has stylistic echoes of Georges Sand and Balzac, but more rural. There are wonderful descriptions, many of which are so vivid that you really feel like you can see or smell what they are recounting. The best of them, of course, are the descriptions of the river, which are wonderful.
Downstream, a mile away, the backwater joined the river, which descended, narrowing, towards some lovely hills.
There it met rocky cliffs, and we saw it rolling along, sparkling in the setting sun. Farther still, on a stretch of brown land, a wide expanse of water glittered. Evening was already raising great plumes of warm mist. Some shimmered golden; others, steaming in the shadow of the hills, were already turning blue.
Right below us, extending along the backwater, ran a bare heath, enlivened only by strands of viburnum and tamarisk. Everywhere else was barren earth, stony. No life, not a single cabin. Only a meadow pipit or a lonely tree creeper here and there.
It’s one of those lovely books where there are all kinds of words you’ve never encountered before (pipit?) but you can generally intuit what they mean (I should probably actually look them up), which gives the writing a sort of mystical feel — it takes me back to my experience of reading as a child, in a very pleasant way.
Kasia Reads 