Authors like Le Clézio are unnerving for many other authors who have to opt for the essay, the biography or the novel when they start to write. Because Le Clézio novels his life while doing the almost poetic soliloquy essay and distills those biographical aspects that serve as the essence of immortality, like childhood grounds, of loves and absences that are much more than what they can suppose for other mortals.
So welcome is this new stamp of life made novelistic evocations (described as it sounds with the sophistication of a five-star menu but it is that way). And let's stretch out from the more battle literature to peek into the souls who tell other things that they write in other much more relevant books, those that should surely be rescued in the event of a catastrophe of our civilization ...
After the lullabies come the childhood songs in which we already know how to recite the refrains. And like everything that is learned by heart, those old songs remain forever in the repertoire we seek when there is no other music to whistle to keep up with the wind that carries us.
Synopsis
On this sentimental journey through Brittany, the idyllic land of his childhood, Le Clézio invites us to reflect on territorial identity, nationalisms and the passage of time. From his first memory #the explosion of a bomb in the garden of his grandmother's house, through the years lived as a child of war, which so terribly impacted his learning of the world, the Nobel Prize in Literature draws a Essential page of its emotional geography that speaks of belonging and its place in memory.
A journey towards maturity, but above all a lucid look at the socio-political changes in a single territory, the progressive disappearance of its traditional economy and the proud dignity of a people that, despite everything, clings to its roots.
You can now buy the novel «Childhood Song», by Jean Marie Le Clézio, here: