Very good subject, refereshing point of view. A pity that the humongous amount of characters and their different names, nicknames, etc. makes the book fuzzy to read and difficult to follow. A good trim would have been better.

En nous baladant
Trouvé dans boîte à livre
Chialé tout du long

I gave this book five stars because I loved reading every part of it. It was so interesting the whole way through, I never lost attention, and I was almost sad every time I had to put it down. The book is based around WWI, and follows the story of a group of condemned men who were court martialed during the war. My favorite scene was a part where the men are first sent into ´No Mans Land.´ All of their reactions differ, and I loved to see how each characters personality responded to the situation. The book is filled with fascinating, and emotional parts, such as the conversations with soldiers that served along side the condemned men. If you have not read the book, those parts alone are worth the read. I learned a few things from my time with the book. Such as, how to never give up hope, and to never leave a friends side. This book is amazing, and I loved every part of it. If you like historical fiction, I would really recommend this book to you. It has elements of drama, family, war, and courage. It is an incredible book, and you will not regret reading it.

I read this book in French and it has a wonderfully sparse, yet also hauntingly elegiac style in the original. It was certainly not a swift read: I read it on and off for about 2 weeks, but it was never boring. I enjoyed the step-by-step revelation of the mystery, Mathilde's sheer obstinancy, the different viewpoints conveyed through letters and dialogues. Perhaps not the greatest of World War One novels ever written, but a moving read nevertheless.

2,5⭐/5

the movie was perfect!!!I see how the book plays out!!!

”Singurul stăpân al lumii este timpul.”

I started this book a long time ago, but couldn't make it past page 8 or 9. It seemed so boring. But several months ago, a friend asked me if it was the same book as the movie, and he said that he had liked the movie. So, I decided to give the movie a try. As luck would have it, our old DVD player kept skipping since the DVD was a bit damaged, so I haven't seen the whole movie yet. But, I was inspired to pick the book up again to figure out what I had missed in the movie. With a bit of perspective from the movie, I was able to get past the dry first section and keep going. It doesn't seem like a book I'm going to love, but at least it looks like I'll finish it this time.

::

I finished the book and have to say that I think I liked the movie better (even though I missed much of the second half). In the movie, Mathilde has a pronounced limp from polio and is an orphan, rather than a young woman in a wheelchair from a childhood accident with rich parents who are still living. She was more whimsical in the movie too, saying things like, "If the dog comes into my room before I'm called for supper, Manech is still alive." There was none of that in the book. I actually think the movie filled in a lot of the gaps that made the book less interesting to read.

Despite reading this over fifteen years ago, the heartbreak and quiet loveliness of the story stuck with me. Readers will be reminded of Cold Mountain as this is another tale of young love separated by a horrific war, the bride-to-be waiting/seeking news/fearing to hope and the young man appalled by the battlefield and longing to return to home, love and normalcy. The weather and landscape are quiet characters in their own right as well. But this is more a mystery and a journey across the aftermath (geographically, psychologically, culturally) of the war than a war-time thriller. I highly recommend, the translation to English is excellent.

J'aime d'amour l'adaptation de ce livre en film alors en le choisissant comme lecture j'avais très peur que mon avis futur sur le livre soit biaisé mais.... pas du tout ! Ce livre fut un immense coup de coeur, une aventure telle qu'il m'en a tiré des larmes chose assez peu commune pour moi lorsque je voyage avec les mots plus qu'avec les images.

Mais la plume de Sébastien Japrisot est si vivante et si juste que cette histoire que je croyais si bien connaître à pris de nouveau vie et une toute nouvelle dimension dans mon esprit. J'ai compris dès les premières pages du livre que j'allais immédiatement intégrer ce livre dans mes favoris de toujours. J'ai tout de suite su également pourquoi l'adaptation m'avait tant plu... le fait que Jeunet ai si fidèlement repris le style et la narration imaginés par Japrisot. Cette verve, ce ton, cet univers si particulier, ces personnages forts et uniques.

C'est un parfait mélange de thriller / roman historique / romance qui m'a transportée sans m'ennuyer une seule seconde malgré le fait que je connaissait bel et bien la fin. La variété de portraits et de paysages, leurs histoires si proches de la réalité historique et leurs parcours croisés, tout est fait pour vous faire aimer cette histoire. De même le genre épistolaire assez présent dans le livre et le peu de dialogue ne sont absolument pas gênants et je ne m'en suis rendue compte qu'assez tard.

Je recommande mille fois ce livre à toute personne n'ayant jamais vu l'adaptation et encore plus aux amoureux du film.

It is not hard to see why this novel is such a beloved classic in France.. it is a timeless love story, a soul-shaking tragedy, and a gripping detective novel with a fiendishly complicated plot, all at the same time. In fact, for the first third of the book, I felt very much like I was lost in a pre-war Simenon story.. it is only slowly in layers that Japrisot gets closer to the human tragedy, and by the end of the book, he has succeeded in making the reader feel something of the meaningless horror and the meanness of the trenches, the inescapable scale of the slaughter, the giant crater that it blew into the edifice of European civilization, and above all and most importantly, the individuality of every single one of those millions of young souls lost.

And in Mathilde, Japrisot creates one of the great romantic heroines in fiction, and one of its most dogged, determined detectives. Small wonder that J-P Jeunet took such a liking to it that he made a movie out of it, although I still don't like the frivolous Amelie-ish tone of his adaptation. I wish I hadn't seen the movie beforehand. Finally, this is one of those books that will repay a second reading, if only because it will make better sense of the diabolocally complex plot!

this book was amazing. It took about 100 pages for me to get into it, but wow, once i did i couldnt put it down. Beautifully written, with an engaging mystery and a very real/disturbing look at the affects of war of man