Book 192: Réunion (French) – Le Bleu des vitraux = The Blue of the Stained-Glass Windows (Jean LODS)

As for Anne-Sylvie’s dream… it is her life itself which is a dream, and at the same time, who knows from what clouds it is made? This house on the hill where she lives today seems to be for her only a waiting room, in a station where no train will come by again, because the tracks are disused and the train she should have taken left long ago, taking her with it and leaving only her ghost on the platform.

[my translation]

I have to admit that I found my novel for this exciting French Indian Ocean island to be rather boring. This description of the relationship between a son (Yann) and his mother (Anne-Sylvie) and father (René) was hard going. It is so numbingly slow that I was begging for something to happen, and the description is dense and interminable. (The description of a laugh goes on for a few pages). The sentences are full of clauses and sub-clauses.

Thirty years later, Yann tries to reconstruct what was, or might have been, but how much of this has he made up? His childhood self is a lot more different from his adult self than might be usually the case. He comes to visit and try to come to terms with his dead mother, who had abandoned him and his father.

I couldn’t identify with any of the major characters, all three of whom were glacial (despite outside appearances); both the parents were lazy and couldn’t care less about anything. In the dream of Anne-Sylvie’s life, there is no place for Yann, as if he’s not hers.

In all, it was a bit of a struggle to get through and to like this one. There is some very nice writing however.

Lods, Jean (1938 – ), Le bleu des vitraux, Saint-Amande, Gallimard, 1987, ISBN 2-07-070781-1, 2006