The Lost Estate

Alain-Fournier's The Lost Estate (Le Grand Meaulnes in the original French), the only book he wrote before dying in World War I and one of the most beloved of modern French novels, is often described as a) the French Catcher in the Rye, and b) untranslatable. I can report that it doesn't match Salinger's sourly funny anti-"phony" satire, but it does, for better or worse (actually, worse), share his adolescent reverence for an idealized, innocent girl-child. And with no knowledge of the original I can't vouch for the translatability of its language, but I will say that the subtle codes of turn-of-the-century French society, on which its delicate plot of misunderstandings and misplaced idealism depends, feel so different from ours that I could not quite comprehend what was going on, or why. Can I recommend it? I'm not sure I can, although I'm glad I read it. Sometimes strangeness unreconciled is its own reward.