Hill

In this 1929 classic, an elegiac ode to Provence, Giono tells a simple tale of peasants living in a valley. At the outset we are introduced to 12 characters living in four houses at the foot of a hill. In one house is Gondran, Marguerite, and her father, Janet. In another is Cesar Maurras, his mother, and their young welfare worker. Besides the inhabitants of the other two houses, the only other resident of the valley is Gagou, a strange outsider. Giono describes every element of the surrounding French landscape in luscious detail, but it is the hill that physically and spiritually dominates the land. Giono delights in watching his characters interact and go about their business of drinking wine, making up stories, and contemplating normal human unhappiness. In terms of traditional plot, very little happens. In an effort to rid the valley of bad fortune, they go hunting for a rogue black cat. Soon thereafter, disaster strikes when the natural spring that supplies them with water runs dry and a fire breaks out. The villagers struggle to find water and control the land, because they care so deeply about "this bit of earth that's ours, these houses where we've all been through so much." The ultimate gift of Giono's short novel is that it allows the reader to travel back to a distant, almost primitive time in rural France. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

In this newly translated 1929 novel, a small community in Provence is forced to contend with internal strife and environmental catastrophes. From its opening page, Giono's short, powerful novel reveals the conflicts that run through it. The prose (and Eprile's translation) is immediately terse and descriptive, setting the scene: a group of four homes, known as "the White Houses," and the nearby fountain that provides them with water. Giono's focus soon turns to a series of animals, their threat escalating until the appearance of a wild boar, which has itself been the target of a hunter's unsuccessful gunfire. Here, the environment and the small group of humans dwelling within it coexist in uneasy balanceuntil, one day, they don't. A series of catastrophes befalls the houses' inhabitants. Janet, the aging father-in-law of Gondran (the de facto protagonist), falls ill early on, beginning with an episode in which he tells Gondran, "I have snakes in my fingers." His strange, ecstatic meditations on the world continue throughout the rest of the novel, contrasting with the stark prose that surrounds them. Soon, larger threats rear their heads: the fountain dries up, and a blaze puts the villagers' homes and their lives at risk. The elemental theme is conscious: from the first page, references to air, fire, water, and earth punctuate the novel. The end result is a harrowing work of fiction in which the potential for violence is decidedly real and clashes between men pale in the face of the natural world's potential for devastation. Though this novel is nearly 90 years old, its sharp focus and uncompromising storytelling leave it feeling hauntingly timelessa story of primal conflicts erupting into seemingly pastoral landscapes. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.