Just Finished Reading: A Very Long Engagement by Sebastien Japrisot (FP: 1991)

Mathilde’s family always knew that she was strong willed. Any child growing into adulthood who could not walk and enjoy a normal life could not survive for long without a will to overcome any additional hardships that came her way. But they had no real idea how strong willed she was until she heard that her finance had died in combat on a frozen battlefield in 1917. With only a scant official report to go on Mathilde needs to know more. Doubts about what actually happened that day only succeed in driving her further and an interview with a soldier based on that section of the frontline only confirms her worst fears. Her lover did not die in action but was seemingly executed in a barbaric way – driven into no-man’s land with four other soldiers all accused of cowardice in the face of the enemy and sentenced to death as an example to the others. But as Mathilde digs ever deeper into the truth of that day and discovers conflicting reports of what did or did not happen between the lines the idea of hope starts to grow. Maybe her lover didn’t die that day, maybe two men walked off that battlefield the following morning after the French launched a blistering attack against the German lines. Maybe someone is lying, maybe someone is covering up the truth, and maybe someone doesn’t want to be found? But if two men walked away and lived another day which two of the five made it? And after so many years have passed why hasn’t Mathilde’s finance contacted her?

 Played by Audrey Tautou in the 2004 movie of the same name, Mathilde is a great central character and I think the movies director certainly picked the best actress to play her. The book does have several distinctive difference from the movie – even down to the different explanation for her being wheelchair bound. In the movie it was from childhood polio, in the book it was from a childhood fall whilst jumping off a ladder in an attempt to fly. In the movie Mathilde lived with her Aunt and Uncle, in the book she spent quite a lot of time with them but lived with her parents (who we never saw in the film) in rather well-off surroundings. The book also took a lot longer to come to the same conclusion – in years rather than pages. The storyline was essentially the same – told mainly through letters and a handful of interviews rather than mostly interviews (visualised through flashbacks) – but with much less emphasis on one of my favourite characters in the film Tina Lombardy (played by Marion Cotillard). Overall I found it to interesting enough to turn the pages though a bit slow and drawn out (the film was more tightly plotted probably through necessity) in places. It was an interesting sideways look at WW1 with nice little insights both to the politics of the war at the front and how particular circumstances affected the families back home – especially from a French point of view.

Translated from the French by Linda Coverdale.