In January 1917, five wounded French soldiers, their hands bound behind them, are brought to the front at Picardy by their own troops, forced into the no-man's land between the French and German armies, and left to die in the cross fire. Their brutal punishment has been hushed up for more than two years when Mathilde Donnay, unable to walk since childhood, begins a quest to find out whether her fiancé, officially "killed in the line of duty," might still be alive. Mathilde moves throughout the country for information about the men. She encounters many people along the way with different information as well as meeting the loved ones of the other families that the men left behind.

This was a bestseller in France and is sort of a mystery, a look into the different ways one story can be told, and a look at life in France during and after the First World War. Because of the many French names I got confused sometimes and wish the characters had been more developed, especially Matilde and her fiancé, Manech. If I would have been more invested in their personalities, I would have been more interested in the outcome.

Can't believe I actually finsihed this book. Several times I wanted to give up but I kept thinking/hoping it was going to get better. The plot itself was interesting and had potential. In a nutshell this book is about France and post WWI and young woman looking for her fiance who is delcared MIA. Some of the little stories and flashbacks were interesting but this book was long and boring at times. Also the characters were confusing. I give it two stars for not being terrible but could have been about half the legnth.

It is quite something to discover yet another way to write about war - not about the battles but about human beings and how their lives are affected by war. In a way the novel reminded me of "All the Light We Cannot See" by Anthony Doerr: war situation, love story, girl with a disability, interesting characters, interesting plot. Reading "A Very Long Engagement", however, it is not hard to understand that the author is known in his native France mainly for detective or crime stories. The novel reads a bit like a detective story. The plot is complex and shows very convincingly how war complicates everything. If the novel is about any one thing at all, it is about confusion that war and human beings together create.
The novel is overloaded with detail and names but that in the long run does not matter. It is so good that, having finished it once, I went back to the beginning and read it a second time, enjoyed it every bit as much. It is essentially about the First World War but the repercussions take years to come, as they did in "All the Light We Cannot See". I am only surprised that "All the Light We Cannot See" is so well known among my book-reading reading friends while "A Very Long Engagement" is not.
Recommended.

Μόλις τελείωσα το «Οι ατέλειωτοι αρραβώνες» και μπορώ πλέον να δηλώσω επισήμως ξετρελαμένη, ή μάλλον όχι, μαγεμένη είναι η κατάλληλη λέξη, καθώς έχω προσέξει επανειλημμένα ότι οι Γάλλοι, συγγραφείς και οι κινηματογραφιστές στα έργα τους μεταδίδουν κάτι από μαγεία…
Το θέμα του βιβλίου, ναι ομολογουμένως δεν είναι χαρούμενο, η αφήγηση όμως δεν μεταφέρει κανένα βάρος, λύπη ούτε καν θλίψη στον αναγνώστη. Σε αυτό οφείλεται το ότι προτίμησε ο συγγραφέας μια πιο ρομαντι��ή οδό και σίγουρα οφείλεται κ στην ηρωίδα του την Ματίλντ. Την αεικίνητη Ματίλντ, που προτιμά να μην σταθεί στιγμή να αναλογιστεί με μεμψιμοιρία το τι έχει συμβεί, αλλά να παλέψει για την αλήθεια με α��σιοδοξία και ζωντάνια. Είναι αποφασισμένη να ξεδιαλύνει το μυστήριο που σκεπάζει την 7η Ιανουαρίου 1917 στο «Μπίνγκο Δειλινό» και το τι τελικά απέγινε ο αγαπημένος της, και κανένας δεν θα την σταματήσει. Είναι σαφέστατα μια από τις καλύτερες ηρωίδες που έχω συναντήσει. Ένας ακόμα λόγος για την ευχάριστη ανάγνωση που προσφέρει το βιβλίο είναι ότι το θέμα του επικεντρώνεται στο μυστήριο των πέντε χαμένων στρατιωτών. Ευτυχώς για εμένα που δεν μπορώ τους πολέμους και την φρίκη τους, το βιβλίο διαδραματίζεται λίγο μετά τον πόλεμο, έτσι λοιπόν όταν στο βιβλίο γίνεται αναφορά σε μάχη, πάντα γίνεται ως κομμάτι της λύσης του μυστηρίου και όχι για να προκαλέσει πόνο, έτσι λοιπόν κ ο αναγνώστης, αυτή την αναφορά αυτόματα την λαμβάνει ως μέρος αυτής της λύσης προσπερνώντας οποιοδήποτε συναίσθημα πέρα της περιέργειας για το τι τελικά έχει συμβεί.
Η γλώσσα είναι υπέροχη, η αφήγηση μαγευτική (ναι το ξέρω ότι επαναλαμβάνομαι). Η συγκίνηση προκαλείται μέσα από όμορφες περιγραφές, τον έρωτα και εικόνες αυτοθυσίας. Τα πάντα είναι τόσο όσο.
Η ιστορία με εξέπληξε με την εξέλιξη της. Σίγουρα το βιβλίο μου έδωσε πολλά περισσότερα από αυτά που περίμενα. Το συστήνω χωρίς δεύτερη σκέψη… ωχ… βέβαια τώρα που το θυμήθηκα είναι εξαντλημένο… πόσο κρίμα πραγματικά… Η γνώμη μου είναι όποιος έχει την τύχη να το βρει να αρπάξει την ευκαιρία και να το διαβάσει.
"Συγχώρεσε με, Μανές, που δεν είμαι παρά μονάχα ο εαυτός μου".
σελ. 258.

A Very Long Engagement is a book about A girl named Mathilde who is trying to find out what happened to her fiance Manech. In the beginning of the book Mathilde hears news that her fiance was given the death sentence along with four other men for self mutilation as a way to get out of the army in World War I. She also hears that a one or two of them might have lived. A new determination comes within her to find her lost fiance. The little hope she has keeps her going on her search.
The problem with the story is that the author constantly builds up hope but then in the next chapter Mathilde learns that whatever she heard couldn't be right. It always leads you to believe that there is still a chance that he is still alive but then ruins that hope. The only part where something actually happens that really contributes to the plot is when she finds one of the soldiers that survives at the end. Another problem I had was the writing style. It seemed to me that the story was written in another language and then translated because the way that the author wrote it was very confusing.
Overall I would not suggest this book to anyone. The story did not have a lot of content that was actually interesting. There was not much suspense because the whole time it seemed quite evident that Manech was dead. Also The end was not very relieving because Manech couldn't remember anything anyways. I just feel like this book didn't really make an impact on me.

Five French soldiers are taken by their fellow soldiers and dumped unarmed into no-man's land to be killed by the enemy one night during WWI. After the war, one of the soldiers who were part of the operation confesses the event to the fiancee of one of them. She sets out to discover what had really happened and whether all five really had died. Beautifully translated, it is a start reminder of the horrors of WWI and the dreadful actions that were taken by men under severe strain. Highly recommend.

This book takes on a very dark issue (execution in the military). The book opens with five soldiers trudging through the French trenches towards their death. They had been condemned to die because each of them either shot themselves in the hand or made themselves and obvious target for the Germans by raising their hands up for snipers (think Thomas in that episode of Downton Abbey).

We have The Eskimo, a carpenter who has traveled the world. Six Sous an angry trade unionist who loves the Tour D'France. That Guy an orphan farmer who doesn't say much. Angel a French-Italian pimp from Marseilles. Then we have Cornflower who also goes by Manech. He's they youngest of this motley crew and also engaged to a girl back home named Mathilde. Before these five are executed a pardon arrives. However the superior officers get around this inconvenience by simply throwing the men into no-mans land with their hands tied behind their backs. It takes some time, but eventually the Germans kill all of them.

Or do they? After the first chapter of the book concludes Mathilde wants to know. Mainly she just wants to grieve for her lost fiancé and does so by trying to learn how he died. She wants a sense of closure but she also wants justice for her fiancé. As she talks directly and through letters to people who were in the trenches with Manech the mystery delves deeper.

This book is a mystery although its pretty laid back. It flows as placidly as the River Somme when there isn't a battle scene being played out. Mathilde is courageous and very very analytical young women. I was surprised when it was revealed that she was crippled, yet that adds to her character. Overall she reminded me of Audrey Tautou's titular character in Amelie. Then again this book was adapted into a film by the same director as Amelie and starred Audrey Tautou. I haven't seen this film but know its on my watch list.

A Very Long Engagement tells the story of Mathilde, a woman who has been told that her fiance, Manech, died in the war. Something seems fishy about his death so she begins to investigate. She wants to know what happened to him, and something keeps telling her that he is still alive somewhere. She soon learns of five soldiers condemned to death for self-mutilation, one of them was Manech. The reader unravels the clues along with Mathilde as she receives more and more information about her fiance's mysterious death.

Honestly, I did not like this book at all. There were too many characters and unnecessary details. The whole book was very confusing and I didn't actually understand what happened until the Chapter where she talks to "That Man". I also did not think that this book taught me a lot about WWI. I wasn't expecting too be a history book of course, but I thought I might take something away from it. If I learned anything, it was that the people fighting in the war were not good to there soldiers. Some of them lied and some were thieves, it seems that they were not very good people. I also thought maybe it would give me a better idea of life in France at the time, but again, I was mistaken. It does not describe France from the point of view of an average French woman or even someone without bias at all, it shows France from Mathilde's perspective. Mathilde is not average at all. First of all, she is in a wheel chair so people treat her differently (and I will have to agree with her character that just because she is in a wheel chair, it doesn't mean she is any different, but not everyone in France thinks the way we do). Second, she doesn't describe France because she lives there and why would she need to show the reader something she has already seen. What I mean is, if I was writing a diary entry and I said: "I walked into my room." I wouldn't describe what my room looks like. I already know what it looks like! Adding "it was small, and my clothes were all over the floor." would not make any difference to me because I am the one reading it and I already know what my room looks like. The book was written for the benefit of the character, Mathilde, so therefore she does not need to give an accurate description of France because she already knows what it is like. Third, Mathilde was looking for her "dead" fiance. How many women had the time and the means to go and investigate the death of there loved ones? In the book there were two. One was Mathilde and the other was Angelo's lover. All of the other widows accepted the fact that there husbands were dead and had to go on with there lives because they had to support themselves and/or their children. Mathilde however, had this unlimited supply of cash to fund her investigation and she didn't have to work at al. She basically had all the time in the world and all the resources she needed at her fingertips. I feel like this was not the usual case for widowed women in France after WWI.

There were too many characters, places, different perspectives, names and it was all too much to keep track of. I also did not think this was a good book to read to help me understand life after WWI. I did not like this book, and I wont recommend it to my friends. I will probably recommend the movie though. I thought the movie was much better than the book. The characters annoyed me (mostly Mathilde), but it is much easier to understand. It also provides a good visual of France at the time, and the trenches.

Liked it - and if you're thinking of giving up before page 100 - then don't! Very confusing and somewhat rambling at first, as well as either badly written or poorly translated. However, it does improve significantly - almost as if another person has taken over writing it - and the conclusion is worth worth waiting for!

Perhaps this is better in the original French? It opens promisingly enough: on a dark January night in 1917, five soldiers are hauled up to the bizarrely named Bingo Crépuscule trench and forced into No Man’s Land as punishment for wounding themselves in order to get out of the war. Ostensibly, by the next day all are killed by German fire. However, a letter sent in 1919 to the fiancée of one of the dead soldiers leads her to believe otherwise. She embarks on a search to trace anyone who might know what actually happened, a search made both more difficult and more interesting by her physical limitations (she’s wheelchair bound) and the devastation of post-war France.

Mathilde’s search is certainly intriguing, if a bit circuitous. Also intriguing are the unfolding stories of the five soldiers' lives and war time service. However, some of the characters are a bit coarse. It’s a decent mystery and an interesting look into the nightmare of World War I, but not the most compelling novel I’ve ever read.

‘A Very Long Engagement’ by Sébastien Japrisot is an intriguing mystery wrapped into a slightly obscured (until well into the novel) anti-war novel. I think World War I, which disrupts all of the characters’ lives, qualifies as not only a horrible war which never should have happened, it definitely was as some in my country crudely say, a meat-grinder. Most soldiers induced to fight in it for their various countries were treated as if they were nothing but single-use wipes being utilized by drunken generals.

The action relies heavily on the writing of epistles and flashbacks. I feel if the author had not used these elements the mystery would have been considerably less gripping. Not many recent authors, imho, can do epistolary novels without annoying readers by a sense of flow being disrupted or a feeling that the inclusion of epistles was unnecessary. But Japrisot used letters, telegrams and messages in a manner which increased anxiety and tension admirably! By the middle of the book I couldn’t put it down!

Mathilde Donney, the teenage main character, begins a quest to find out what really happened to her very young fiancé, Maneche, nineteen years old. Her grief on reading a notice that he died in action in 1917 is incredibly wrenching, a grief shared by many in France. But unlike the other characters we meet in the novel, Mathilde is fortunate to be the daughter of a wealthy man. Her father loves and indulges her. This may be because she has been in a wheelchair since she was a child. She fell off of a ladder and has never been able to walk despite a lot of medical care. However, Maneche, who was thirteen when she met him at age ten, has always adored her.

Mathilde begins her search for Maneche when a man who is dying from the Spanish flu in a hospital near her sends her a letter. He tells her that her fiancé was not killed in action but that she and four other families were lied to about the deaths of their loved ones. Maneche was convicted of self-mutilation along with the four other men. The French leaders, the sick man says, had decided to make an example of them because too many men were deserting or shooting themselves in their hands or feet to escape the dreadful carnage. After their convictions, they were sent back to the trenches. With their hands tied behind their backs, they were forced to crawl through the wire into the “no-man’s-land” between French and German trenches. The intention was that they suffer publicly in view of the other soldiers from their fear, and that they die horribly by either gunfire or bombs. The understanding of most of the witnesses is five bodies were removed several days later. But one witness states only four, or maybe three, were found. Maybe one of the missing bodies was Maneche, if there were bodies missing. Is Maneche alive?

Besides Mathilde’s fiancé, there was a farmer called only by the nickname That Man, a trade union Marxist called SixSous, a carpenter called Eskimo, and a pimp called Common Law. Each of them had given the hospitalized man, who had been in the trench where the men had been forced out into the no-man’s land, a letter to deliver to their families. The sick man had copied them before delivering them. He gave these copies to Mathilde. Mathilde decides to find all of recipients of the letters. She hires a lawyer and a private investigator. She puts an ad in local papers. The people she meets are incredibly interesting. Some are broken and some who despite their war losses have hopes Mathilde will solve the mystery of how their relatives really died.

She learns almost no one thinks, or wants to believe, any men were punished by being forced to go to their deaths in this cruel manner by their own country. Most people think the hospitalized man is lying. However, Mathilde slowly pieces together a clue here, a whispered confirmation there, a detail proving something totally off-the-rails happened. It also becomes clear that whatever happened was so reprehensible, it was hushed up.

Seven years later, she has most of the pieces. There are minor discrepancies in the stories and rumors she has uncovered (which is very fascinating and irksome, gentle reader), but everything leads inevitably to the reality that a terrible injustice was done. Still, Mathilde hopes the threads will lead her to Maneche whether it be his burial place or his hiding place.

I highly recommend ‘A Very Long Engagement’. It is a first-class mystery!

Interesting, both in style and subject matter. Like "The Birds Fall Down", the protagonist is trying to unravel a mystery that affects her personally, with some travel and "digging" but primarily through other people's narratives.

The threads are at times hard to follow and just when you think something has been established, someone else's story changes the perspective and you have to flip back to ascertain what has happened to who and how the story has changed. But I found this intriguing rather than irritating, as some readers seem to have done.

Why only three stars? Not sure, really. I didn't find the main character Mathilde particularly likeable, despite her loyalty to her fiance and other good qualities. I'm not sure I found her very believable or convincing.