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A review by brettt
The Catalans by Patrick O'Brian
3.0
After changing his name and re-creating much of his personal history, Patrick O'Brian moved to a village in southern France in a region called Catalonia, which spans parts of France and northern Spain. Among his earlier works as "Patrick O'Brian" is a short 1953 novel about a village in this region called The Catalans.
Alain Roig returns to his home village of Saint-Féliu after some time in the Far East to find his family in turmoil. His middle-aged and respectable cousin Xavier, who is also the mayor of Saint-Féliu, is engaged to Madeline, the young daughter of a local grocer. The Roig family feels its property and wealth at risk from this threatened intruder -- who knows what silly ideas a middle-aged man may indulge for his young and flighty new bride, and how much those ideas might cost? Madeline's family, for her part, is none too pleased with the match either given the age gap.
Alain learns that Xavier hopes Madeline will save him from what he sees as his own lack of feeling, but as he winds deeper into the situation he finds that he is falling in love with Madeline, and she with him as she really does not love Xavier.
O'Brian's trademark wit is a splendid feature of his better-known Aubrey-Maturin series, and here it helps solidify the vision of a small town invested in its own small concerns as the great issues of the world. It has its own national and cultural flavor, but Saint-Féliu is the same sleepy small town that can be found in every corner of the world, staging its own version of the same kinds of drama playing in them all.
The wit and tone are probably The Catalans' strongest feature. While O'Brian uses his characters to explore ideas about how often people seek to use others to find what they think they lack in themselves, the story itself is a little light to carry much weight in that area. Alain is clearly drawn, but Xavier and Madeline seem a little too much like stock characters added from the shelf and so the plot that rests on their triple base is unsteadier than it should be for best results.
Original available here.
Alain Roig returns to his home village of Saint-Féliu after some time in the Far East to find his family in turmoil. His middle-aged and respectable cousin Xavier, who is also the mayor of Saint-Féliu, is engaged to Madeline, the young daughter of a local grocer. The Roig family feels its property and wealth at risk from this threatened intruder -- who knows what silly ideas a middle-aged man may indulge for his young and flighty new bride, and how much those ideas might cost? Madeline's family, for her part, is none too pleased with the match either given the age gap.
Alain learns that Xavier hopes Madeline will save him from what he sees as his own lack of feeling, but as he winds deeper into the situation he finds that he is falling in love with Madeline, and she with him as she really does not love Xavier.
O'Brian's trademark wit is a splendid feature of his better-known Aubrey-Maturin series, and here it helps solidify the vision of a small town invested in its own small concerns as the great issues of the world. It has its own national and cultural flavor, but Saint-Féliu is the same sleepy small town that can be found in every corner of the world, staging its own version of the same kinds of drama playing in them all.
The wit and tone are probably The Catalans' strongest feature. While O'Brian uses his characters to explore ideas about how often people seek to use others to find what they think they lack in themselves, the story itself is a little light to carry much weight in that area. Alain is clearly drawn, but Xavier and Madeline seem a little too much like stock characters added from the shelf and so the plot that rests on their triple base is unsteadier than it should be for best results.
Original available here.