Collina

Surprisingly fewer steps removed from, say, Algernon Blackwood, than one might expect.

Giono made a point to title this work ‘Hill’, as opposed to ‘The Hill’. By removing the article, Giono is suggesting what just about every reader will come to find for themselves; that said Hill is our protagonist in this slim novel. It starts off a little strange, and never really stops being stran Leggi tutto

Jean Giono 's Hill is the tale of several Provencal peasants living in an isolated hillside community facing the ravages of a nature gone mad. Their patriarch, the half-paralyzed Janet frightens them with tales of their folly in the face of nature: Earth isn't made for you alone to keep on using the w Leggi tutto

"These hills, you shouldn't trust them." "Hill" is a terse, foul-tempered and mysterious little novel. The bare-bones denizens of a mostly-abandoned French village wonder in horror as first the fountain dries up and then an apocalyptic fire rages. An old man lies on his deathbed spouting Faulknerian Leggi tutto

I received an ARC from NYRB Classics. Four families live quiet and simple lives at the foot of a hill in Provence in the early twentieth century. Their small community consists of four white houses and a small shack for an old bachelor that also lives among these peasants. Their days consist of worki Leggi tutto

Greta Thunberg would have loved this book. It's a cautionary tale about humanity's exploitation of nature. We harm it, it shows us who is really the boss but we never learn. "Hill" is a spectacle of nature anthropomorphism, and is one of the best of it's kind. It might be too poetic or unusual for s Leggi tutto

It's a question sometimes brought up in book discussion groups: is a novel's setting or landscape a character? You can occasionally see that it is, most often not. I do remember a professor once stating that in a Hardy novel the Wessex sun is a character. In Jean Giono's novel Hill it's apparent and Leggi tutto

J'avais déjà lu ce bouquin étant gosse et j'en gardais un souvenir assez négatif. J'me souvenais de longues descriptions de paysages campagnards et de la vie déprimante des derniers habitants d'un village paumé. Et puis miracle, ce matin, je constate que les descriptions sont loin d'être interminabl Leggi tutto

Colline... j'ai dû le lire en quatrième, ça m'avait foutu une claque. Plus tard j'ai eu une très bonne note en rédaction-- j'avais décrit un incendie, un pastiche éhonté. Encore plus tard je suis tombé amoureux d'une jeune fille prénommée Coline-- une vraie sauvagine. Va savoir. Je viens de le relire. Leggi tutto

De boosaardigheid van de heuvels Les Bastides Blanche; een bijna verlaten hameau, ver van de bewoonde wereld, in de Provençaalse heuvels met vier huizen, bewoond door een dertiental inwoners. Ze verdienen er hun brood met hun boerenbedoening, vertellen elkaar verhalen en laten de absint en wijn rijke Leggi tutto