Paradise before the guns opened fire

Reviewing recently a new English version of Alain-Fournier’s 1913 novel Le Grand Meaulnes, I was happy and relieved to find that it retains its magic. It has entranced generations of adolescents, not all of them French, but I had wondered if it would still appeal after so many years. It is an extraordinary book, part fairytale or romance, part realistic study of French provincial life, sometimes grim, in the last years of the 19th century; and some of its fascination comes from this curiously hybrid quality. It is both naive and knowing. It has the dewy freshness of a first novel, but it is also admirably constructed, reminding one that Alain-Fournier, though only 26 when the novel appeared, was no provincial innocent, but already belonged to the literary establishment. His closest friend (and brother-in-law) Jacques Rivière became editor of the Nouvelle Revue Française, and Alain-Fournier himself knew Gide and his circle.