Review: Wandering Star

Wandering Star

by Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio

translated from the French

ABOUT

"Wandering Star" is the saga of a young Jewish girl named Esther who lives in a small village in France in the 1940s. When German troops march into the village, the Jewish residents are forced to flee to Italy to avoid being taken captive. Esther and her mother, separated from Esther's father, spend a year in an Italian village and then live for a time in Paris, before making an arduous journey to Israel.

MY THOUGHTS

"Wandering Star" is a powerful book, and I was swept up in the flow of the storytelling. It's raw and gritty and harrowing, yet also hauntingly beautiful.

"Through the kitchen window, she saw Mr. Ferne's silhouette leaning over the piano. The notes slid smoothly out, hesitated, started up again, as if it were a language, as if Mr. Ferne wasn't really sure where to begin anymore. Then the music truly began, it sprang from the piano all of a sudden and filled the entire house, the garden, and the street, it filled everything with its power, its order, and then it grew soft, mysterious."

"For the first time, Esther knew what prayer was. It was the muffled sound of voices, suddenly bursting forth with the incantation of language, the rhythmic rocking of bodies, the star-flamed candles, the warm darkness filled with smells. It was the vortex of words."

Esther is an amazing heroine - strong, inquisitive, brave, optimistic - and the author brilliantly captures her tone and emotion. She experiences the horrors of war, discovers the beauty of her religion, and lives a life of heroic grace.

There were aspects of the book that I did not like, however. The sentence structure is frequently awkward, as if the English grammar was sacrificed to preserve the French syntax. (For example: "Brao was a fifteen-year-old boy, he'd been placed at the children's home, he was one of the difficult cases." A better translation would be: "Brao, a fifteen-year-old boy, was one of the difficult cases who had been placed at the children's home.") It was very difficult for me to lay aside the mental red editing pen.

There are frequent shifts from first person to third person, often with only a paragraph break between the changes. A few chapters are told from the perspective of secondary characters, which didn't flow well and seemed unnecessary.

When Esther arrives in Israel, she encounters a Palestinian girl on the road and then there is a section about this girl, Nemjam. It's a poignant emotional story but it felt like it got dropped randomly into the book.

The author is the recipient of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Literature, and if that prize is viewed from a political standpoint - "championing human rights on a broad scale" - this recognition is understandable. Based on this particular book, though, I do not believe the author deserves any literary awards.

RATING
For what I liked about the book, it's a 4, but for what I disliked, it's a 2, so it balances out to a 3.

I read this book for the Paris In July blog event.