By A Slow River

Philippe Claudel

I started off with a bit of hesitation, thinking it a mystery, which I seem not to be able to read anymore. I am reading it as a book for a group I'm trying to be more active in and help come back to life.

Well .. there is a mystery of 2 deaths that runs through it but it is more of a novel in which deaths occur than a mystery. There's a third death but a natural one.

It's set in France, in WW1, and told through the eyes of a world-weary detective reviewing this period in his life 20 years later. As a WW1 novel, it is superb and I would really recommend it to anyone who likes to read novels set then. You get a real feel for what it was like to be in France at that time although the focus is not on the war.

Here are the blurbs I liked best from the flaps and back cover ... "Claudel writes with a heart-gripping melancholy beauty" and "an indelible meditation on morality".

The best group of sentences I read today: He walked off. He went home to his regrets and left me to mine. No doubt he knew -- as I do -- that you can live in regrets as in a country.

Really like Claudel and will look for more by him. He's French and this is in translation. If you do read it, I promise you that you will be as irritated as I was at the change of the title from The Gray Souls.