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Chargement... Guerre et térébenthine (2013)par Stefan Hertmans
  
THE WAR ROOM (38) Top Five Books of 2017 (282) Books Read in 2017 (3,570) » 1 plus Top Five Books of 2013 (1,559) Actuellement, il n'y a pas de discussions au sujet de ce livre.  Joop-le-philosophe | Dec 28, 2018 | 
 Before this exciting, candid, at times verbose first-person narrative from the trenches begins, there is a slight problem. Part one proves a pedestrian affair in which Hertmans attempts to reconstruct the earlier life of his grandfather, whom he knew only as an old man. The opening sequence is interesting, often touching but the methodology which also includes the author’s present day life intermingled with his boyhood memories and the more distant days of his grandfather’s youth, is dutiful, self conscious and somewhat tentative as the influence of the great W.G. Sebald occasionally overpowers the writing. Admirers of Sebald may decide War and Turpentine is a pale imitation and look elsewhere. That would be a pity. Hertmans does lack the laconic tone of wry melancholy which Sebald mastered and his inspired translator Anthea Bell conveys so brilliantly.  In the final section, Hertmans reappears to narrate the six decades of Urbain’s postwar life. There is a sad secret at the heart of his loveless marriage to Gabrielle that it wouldn’t do to give away; it provides much of the pathos in this heartbreaking section. The only consolation left to Urbain in the long tail of his life appears to have been painting, and Hertmans writes about this with both passion and delicacy. The book has such convincing density of detail, with the quiddities of a particular life so truthfully rendered, that I was reminded of a phrase from Middlemarch: “an idea wrought back to the directness of sense, like the solidity of objects”. Hertmans’ achievement is exactly that. Prix et récompensesDistinctionsListes notables
"An international best seller: a vivid, masterly novel about a Flemish man who reconstructs his grandfather's story--his hopes, loves, and art, all disrupted by the First World War--from the unflinching notebooks he filled with pieces of his life. The life of Urbain Martien--artist, soldier, survivor of World War I--lies contained in two notebooks he left behind when he died in 1981. His grandson, a writer, retells his story, the notebooks giving him the impetus to imagine his way into the locked chambers of Urbain's memory. He vividly recounts a whole life: Urbain as the child of a lowly church painter, retouching his father's work; dodging death in a foundry; fighting in the war that altered the course of history; marrying the sister of the woman he truly loved; haunted by an ever-present reminder of the artist he had hoped to be and the soldier he was forced to become. Wrestling with this story, Urbain's grandson straddles past and present, searching for a way to understand his own part in both. As artfully rendered as a Renaissance fresco, War and Turpentine paints an extraordinary portrait of one man's life and reveals how that life echoed down through the generations. (With black-and-white illustrations throughout.)"-- Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
Discussion en coursAucunCouvertures populaires
 Google Books — Chargement...GenresClassification décimale de Melvil (CDD)839.313Literature German and related languages Other Germanic literatures Netherlandish literatures Dutch Dutch fictionClassification de la Bibliothèque du CongrèsÉvaluationMoyenne: (3.99)
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27/03/2018 ... Stefan Hertmans a écrit cet ouvrage en s’inspirant de la vie de son grand-père, qui rêvait de devenir peintre. À travers l’histoire de cet homme, on découvre l’histoire de la Belgique au XXe siècle. Pour Dirk Wouters, l’ambassadeur belge aux États-Unis, ce livre est “le compagnon absolu de tous les amoureux de l’art et de l’histoire”.
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Source : Condé Nast Traveler | New York | www.cntraveler.com/