Un long dimanche de fiançailles: Roman (French Edition) (alkuperäinen julkaisuvuosi 1991; vuoden 1991 painos)

I read this about a month or so ago but forgot to write a journal entry. Still, it's a pretty memorable book.

During WWI five French soldiers are tossed into the no-man's land between the French and German armies as punishment for wounding themselves to get out of duty. This was not standard procedure so the details are not generally available. What actually happened to the men is not told to their loved ones.

One of these loved ones is Mathilde Donnay, engaged to one of the soldiers, the youngest. Injured in childhood, she is unable to walk. She is determined to find out exactly what happened to her fiance, however, and leaves no stone unturned to get answers.

Different stories are told by different persons. Sometimes the facts match up and sometimes they do not. Mathilde does not let this discourage her.

It's a touching story, laden with the heaviness of war. It gave me a very real sense of what it must have been like in those trenches, at least part of the time. And Mathilde stands up as a hero in her own right. ( )

Collections Folio Movie tie-in edition ( )

Enquête au long cours. Très prenant ( )

En el frío invierno de 1917, cinco soldados franceses, heridos y maniatados, caminan hacia un destino trágico en un desolado rincón del frente. Matilde sabe, en el fondo de su corazón, que su amado Manech sigue vivo, a pesar del telegrama que anunciaba que había caído en combate junto a tantos otros de sus camaradas. Una certeza que se mezcla con el horror y la indignación cuando, una vez acabada la guerra, un sargento moribundo le cuenta la verdad sobre la última vez en que vio a su novio: Manech y otros cuatro soldados, acusados de herirse a sí mismos para escapar del frente, fueron atados y abandonados en tierra de nadie. A partir de ese momento, Matilde emprende la búsqueda de la verdad. A lo largo de los años, armada de un coraje inquebrantable, irá escudriñando las vidas de aquel puñado de hombres entregados a la muerte. Descubrirá historias de amor, de culpa, de abandono, con el trasfondo siempre de la locura colectiva que llevó a los hombres a cometer las peores atrocidades en nombre de la patria. Una conmovedora historia de amor a través del tiempo, envuelta en un apasionante misterio que se va desvelando poco a poco, dejando al descubierto una tupida red de ilusiones, amor y desdicha

My friend Ed also suggested this one a few years back. I recall the circumstances of acquiring it more thna the novel itself. It is interesting that the protagonist's disability is much evident in the book than the film adaptation. I suppose Miramax determined that we weren't prepared for Amelie in My Left Foot. That was harsh, wasn't it? ( )