Delight squeaky!

But what a portrait gallery! For it is above all what it is. Albert, the good soldier kneaded conscience, morality, whose virtue is lucky when necessary; Edward, a broken face, smashed, the unimaginable and unspeakable that one takes pity on the point to forgive him all his amorality; Aulnay-Pradelle, this new rich dripping careerism, we love to hate and whose Machiavellian success irritates us; the sweet cruelty Madeleine; the acid-sweet Péricourt; the obsequious-shabby aedile; Inspector-méticulo filthy; the innocent child; the simple companion ... The list is endless and the precision of the line to the appointment of each page. We want more because everything is true, even if nothing is; each was crossed, yet these portraits are unique, new, daring, irreverent, anti-academic.

This is the Goncourt for those who are afraid of Goncourt (like the finalist last year, The truth of the matter Harry Québert ultimately distinguished by students), the novel about the Great War for those the subject may not attract at first in a novel. For it is impossible to close it!

The introduction is a bit long (but it is absolutely necessary, it is important not to get discouraged!). The characters take time to settle but the transplant takes, sustainably. The factual material gives the patient construction and extremely effective gives the body of the story, its relentless course. Rest irony, cynicism burning, absolutely cleaner, which increases the pages and gives the weight of this fresco masterpiece. Much more than a critical time, it is that of a civilization clash of crags, the battlefield of the war, which once stored the guns, tear sees the darker edges human characters, these dark corners that we know, that one feels, which splendor and misery of our species.

Then one jubilant, but reading of bias: it is impossible to laugh lightly. It devours one eye only, but a hungry and insatiable eye! Everything is true because everything is so human. Until more unlikely. What a success! It is never enough ...