Les champs d’honneur a marqué la littérature relative à la Première Guerre mondiale à plusieurs niveaux. D’abord parce que le thème est traité à travers une histoire familiale dense et très personnelle, dans un style qui ne l’est pas moins. D’autre part parce que ce fut le premier roman de Jean Rouaud, et que le thème était alors original pour un primo romancier. On peut dire que Les champs d’honneur a renouvelé le thème, bien en amont de la vague qui déferle aujourd’hui.

Istanbul, Salonique et Venise apparaissent comme une triple variation sur des thèmes byzantins, fragments de mosaïques et de remparts. Distinguer entre elles ce qui est général de ce qui est particulier à chacune serait refuser l'aventure que constituent les passages de l'une à l'autre. La ville est un rêve de pierre, mais en même temps la ville vit, encore et toujours, dans l'éveil des commerces, des travaux, des femmes, et Jean Roudaut est celui qui peut enfin rêver au sens de la profonde remémoration, qui sait lire le palimpseste complexe et ruiné des villes. D'une description historique (Byzance) à une interrogation sur la réalité de l'objet et de l'image (Venise), par la relation d'une promenade particulière (Salonique), c'est le récit d'un voyage d'Orient en Occident qui suit le soleil de son lever à son coucher.

A collection of the greatest children's tales

Children's tales

André Roussin appartient à une de ces vieilles et nombreuses familles qui dans les grandes villes de province constituent de véritables tribus. Après cinquante années, c'est sur sa propre tribu familiale et sur les lieux de ses enfances marseillaises ou aixoises qu'il se retourne avec un regard tantôt moqueur, tantôt attendri. « O Goethe, laisse-moi retrouver la boîte à couleurs de mon enfance », écrivait Bettina Brentano à son illustre correspondant. André Roussin retrouve la sienne, et c'est l'itinéraire à la fois émouvant et drôle d'une enfance heureuse, dans un foisonnement d'oncles, de tantes et cousins évoqués avec toute la verve comique de celui qui devint l'auteur de La Sainte Famille, Lorsque l'enfant paraît et Les oeufs de l'autruche.
Ce livre pourrait s'appeler « L'enfance d'un auteur comique ». Outre la fraîcheur et la poésie, propres au Midi, qui émanent de certaines pages, le lecteur s'apercevra sans doute que certains milieux semblent faits pour susciter des vocations. C'est peut-être grâce aux personnages qui ont peuplé son enfance qu'André Roussin est un homme de théâtre - et de théâtre comique.

Ils n'étaient pas encore mariés qu'il la frappait déjà. 
Sabrina la Lyonnaise, venue vivre l'année du bac dans l'Algérie de ses parents, a commis l'erreur d'épouser Sélim, le beau garçon du village. Sous les airs enjôleurs du bon mari, se cachait un homme violent. 
Très violent.

La Gifle est l'ahurissant récit, véridique, de huit années d'une descente aux enfers conjugale. Insultée, humiliée, battue des heures durant à coups de pied, de branche d'arbre, de tuyau d'arrosage ou de batte de base-ball, Sabrina a cru plusieurs fois succomber. De douleur d'abord. De tristesse et de honte, ensuite.
Mais cette jeune mère a décidé de ne plus baisser la tête. Elle a pris la plume pour témoigner, comprendre ce qui est arrivé. Se comprendre aussi. Pourquoi est-elle restée? Quels mécanismes l'enchaînaient ainsi à son bourreau?

De ce texte éprouvant et prenant, l'on retient aussi la longue impunité de celui qui frappe, l'inefficacité des sanctions, la lâcheté des voisins et passants qui voient pleuvoir les coups, la stupéfiante mauvaise foi de sa belle-famille. Et l'on reste coi devant la manière dont un homme transforme sa névrose en une inépuisable haine envers la femme qui partage sa vie.
Sans complaisance, Sabrina envoie à toutes les victimes de violences conjugales un appel vibrant à ne pas se laisser engloutir par le malheur et la culpabilité.

Jean-Baptiste Poncet, jeune et séduisant apothicaire résident au Caire tombe amoureux d'Alix de Maillet, la fille du consul de France.
Il se voit confier une double mission, soigner le Négus, l'Empereur d'Ethiopie, et ouvrir une ambassade, cinquante ans après l'échec de l'incursion des jésuites. Il accepte cette aventure en pensant être anobli par le roi Louis XIV en récompense de sa prouesse et ainsi aspirer à épouser la belle Alix.
Cependant, derrière l'ouverture de cette ambassade en Abyssinie, complotent jésuites et capucins qui veulent convertir le Négus déjà chrétien et le faire entrer dans le giron de l'Eglise catholique, de laquelle quelques détails théologiques les séparent. 
On suit le parcours de Jean-Baptiste le téméraire et l'idéaliste à travers les chemins d'Afrique et de France, dans un périple initiatique au cours duquel il part à la recherche de la liberté, celle qui conduit au bonheur.

Dans une petite ville du Berry, écrasée par la chaleur de l'été, en 1919, un héros de la guerre est retenu prisonnier au fond d'une caserne déserte. 
Devant la porte, son chien tout cabossé aboie jour et nuit. 
Non loin de là, dans la campagne, une jeune femme usée par le travail de la terre, trop instruite cependant pour être une simple paysanne, attend et espère. Le juge qui arrive pour démêler cette affaire est un aristocrate dont la guerre a fait vaciller les principes. 
Trois personnages et, au milieu d'eux, un chien, qui détient la clef du drame... 
Plein de poésie et de vie, ce court récit, d'une fulgurante simplicité, est aussi un grand roman sur la fidélité. 
Etre loyal à ses amis, se battre pour ceux qu'on aime, est une qualité que nous partageons avec les bêtes. Le propre de l'être humain n'est-il pas d'aller au-delà et de pouvoir aussi reconnaître le frère en celui qui vous combat ?

Children's tales.

Elmer the elephant is bright-colored patchwork all over. No wonder the other elephants laugh at him!

If he were ordinary elephant color, the others might stop laughing. That would make Elmer feel better, wouldn't it? David McKee's comical fable about everyone’s favorite patchwork elephant teaches readers to be themselves and celebrates the power of laughter.

Miffy is a loveable bunny that has delighted children worldwide for forty-five years. Dick Bruna's books have enchanted millions of young readers of forty languages. Now for the first time in the United States, the introductory Miffy story is being paired with a plush toy that is sure to charm the scores of existing devotees and to win the hearts of new readers

«Chaque fois que l'on m'a posé la question ¿Pourquoi êtes-vous allé à Santiago ?¿, j'ai été bien en peine de répondre. Car le Chemin a pour effet sinon pour vertu de faire oublier les raisons qui ont amené à s'y engager. On est parti, voilà tout.» Jean-Christophe Rufin a suivi le «Chemin du Nord» jusqu'à Saint-Jacques : huit cents kilomètres le long des côtes basque et cantabrique, à travers les montagnes sauvages des Asturies et de Galice. Il s'est peu à peu transformé en clochard céleste, en routard de Compostelle. Il nous raconte, avec une délicieuse autodérision, ce parcours humain et spirituel.

 Wolf notices that all the animals in the forest seem to be in love, except him. He seeks advice from his friends who suggest he clean himself up, gather some flowers, and head out into the world to find her -- the girl who will make his "knees wobble", "head feel full of pudding", and "heart beat so hard" he will "think it about to burst". He wanders into the world, stumbling at first, but finally finds he has fallen in love. Eleonore Thulier's colorful artwork makes this book a joy to look at over and over.

A little boy hunts for the biggest bear in the world and finds it in a twinkling starlight surprise--the Great Bear constellation--at the end of this heartwarming book!

Toby thinks his shadow looks like the biggest bear in the world. But Dad says there's a much bigger one than that. Is it the large chocolate bear in a store? The bear picture Toby paints in preschool? The huge stone bear fountain in the park? The tall bear with a top hat at the carnival? Or the enormous balloon bear floating above the town? At bedtime, Daddy shows Toby the biggest bear in the world, who lives above their heads and only comes out at night: the bright group of stars called the Great Bear! A set of twelve flashing lights illuminates the constellation on the final page.

The tragic love story of Daniel, a 10 year old boy and Lisa, a 9 year old girl.

Larry Weller, born in 1950, is an ordinary guy made extraordinary by his creator's perception, irony and tenderness. Carol Shields gives us, as it were, a CAT scan of his life, in episodes between 1977 and 1997 that flash back and forward seamlessly. As Larry journeys toward the millennium, adapting to society's changing expectations of men, Shields' elegant prose makes the trivial into the momentous. Among all the paradoxes and accidents of his existence, Larry moves through the spontaneity of the seventies, the blind enchantment of the eighties and the lean, mean nineties, completing at last his quiet, stubborn search of self. Larry's odyssey mirrors the male condition at the end of our century with targeted wit, unerring poignancy and faultless wisdom.

Bernadette Fox has vanished.

When her daughter Bee claims a family trip to Antarctica as a reward for perfect grades, Bernadette, a fiercely intelligent shut-in, throws herself into preparations for the trip. But worn down by years of trying to live the Seattle life she never wanted, Ms. Fox is on the brink of a meltdown. And after a school fundraiser goes disastrously awry at her hands, she disappears, leaving her family to pick up the pieces--which is exactly what Bee does, weaving together an elaborate web of emails, invoices, and school memos that reveals a secret past Bernadette has been hiding for decades. Where'd You Go Bernadette is an ingenious and unabashedly entertaining novel about a family coming to terms with who they are and the power of a daughter's love for her mother. 

Summer 1939. In Pradel, François Barthélémy and Aloise, aided by their eldest son, continue working the family land. For a long time, the younger ones dispersed. Mathieu lives and prospers in Algeria with his wife and children. In Switzerland, Lucie worries for her German husband and their son. Charles and his fiancee Mathilde, both teachers, have been appointed for several hundred kilometers. As for Louise, the youngest, she dreamed of becoming a missionary in Africa. It is far from happy days of their childhood when they welcomed less fortunate folks to share what little they had ... But the same force continues to bring them every Christmas to this land of Pradel where we come to regain force, the land we dream about when reality is too painful and where you come to die. War comes, and it will change the course of their lives ...

hristian Signol reveals his grandparents, great-grandparents and all the subsequent family to us at last! How these wonderful people have inspired his works -- a marvel. Thankfully, I had read many of his earlier works, that delved into these lives as part of his historical novels. Now, to see "from whence they came" is a delight. Signol managed, somehow, to make this a work of fiction and at the same time let the reader know which character was which in his family tree.

it is a polished little gem--a study of a 2nd marriage of two people who grow to loathe each other but can't stay apart. It is also a reveal of a neighborhood in Paris in the 50's or possibly early 60's. (There is gentrification going on.) Good to know that there are 100's more of Simenon's books to be found.

This is a dark, psychological study of a man and his brothers who are involved with the 'organization'. Eddie is a trusted servant who oversees the organization's work in Florida, however when his 2 brothers become hunted men, he finds himself caught up in a difficult situation.
Simenon is a wonderful writer who looks deep into the human psyche and often shows us sides of ourselves which other writers ignore.

Shy piano teacher Maggie Blackburn has selflessly devoted her life and career to her students at the Forest Park Conservatory of Music in an affluent Connecticut suburb. Then a rape shakes the school’s refined grounds. The violated young student, Brendan Bauer, is a timid ex-seminarian. The perpetrator, Rolfe Christensen, is the newly appointed and celebrated composer-in-residence who has dazzled the faculty in ways Maggie could never have dreamed of. But when the conservatory’s conspiracy to conceal the crime results in Christensen’s murder, Bauer is suspected—and Maggie vows to find the real killer.
 
What Maggie soon discovers is that Christensen’s reputation—as genius, manipulator, and sexual predator—had preceded him, giving many people a reason to want him dead. But when the murder of another colleague casts additional doubt on Bauer’s innocence, Maggie’s labyrinthine hunt for a killer turns into more than an investigation. Now it’s a liberating obsession with secrets—hers included—as dark and twisted as the crimes themselves.
 
One of today’s most prolific and acclaimed literary talents, Joyce Carol Oates is a National Book Award winner, a four-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, and a #1 New York Times–bestselling author. As Elmore Leonard said, with her psychological suspense novels written under the name Rosamond Smith, “[she] could become the world’s Number One mystery writer easily.”

Alice Ellis is a Midwestern refugee living in Manhattan. Still recovering from a painful divorce, she depends on the companionship and camaraderie of tightly knit circle of friends. At the center of this circle is a rock band struggling to navigate New York’s erratic music scene, and an apartment/practice space with approximately fifty key-holders. One sunny day, Alice enters the apartment and finds two of the band members shot dead. As the double-murder sends waves of shock through their lives, this group of friends begins to unravel, and dangerous secrets are revealed one by one. When Alice begins to notice things amiss in her own apartment, the tension breaks out as it occurs to her that she is not the only person with a key, and she may not get a chance to change the locks.

Jane Smiley applies her distinctive rendering of time, place, and the enigmatic intricacies of personal relationships to the twists and turns of suspense. The result is a brilliant literary thriller that will keep readers guessing up to its final, shocking conclusion

When Myriam, a French-Moroccan lawyer, decides to return to work after having children, she and her husband look for the perfect caretaker for their two young children. They never dreamed they would find Louise: a quiet, polite and devoted woman who sings to their children, cleans the family's chic apartment in Paris's upscale tenth arrondissement, stays late without complaint and is able to host enviable birthday parties.

The couple and nanny become more dependent on each other. But as jealousy, resentment and suspicions increase, Myriam and Paul's idyllic tableau is shattered...

The stories in these books are just stories to him but clearly in this collection he is the narrator and the story is about him. How does one know? Well, for example, there is a story about a Yiddish writer who is invited to go on a book tour in Portugal and has a fateful meeting with someone his literary agent recommended he contact. Then one notices that when the stories involve extremely personal matters (such as the wife of the owner of the printing press that publishes his magazine wanting to sleep with him) he invents a false name for the character but the story is still about a character just like him.