One of the true uses of the novel has been to illustrate the vital transitions a human being makes from one stage of life to another. Some of the greatest and most consistently valued books of this century, like this one, Herman Hesse’s Steppenwolf or E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India manage this in a particularly intense way and seem to be speaking as much about a transition in a whole culture as in a particular individual.


The transition that Meaulnes speaks of is the one from childhood to adolescence; the journey from the sharp joys and griefs of a near-powerless creature to the next stage of life which combines childhood’s fresh wonder in completely new experiences (friendship, violence, sexual attraction) with the power at last to act in the world (to be responsible or irresponsible, to be loyal or to be aggressive).


Somehow Alain-Fournier captures this process of ‘first growing-up’ with this magically effective book, a book sometimes more moving in its perfection than one could imagine a work of art to be. Told from an early adolescent’s point of view it is imbued with the mythic feel of that age; when so many things are marvellous because we are experiencing them for the first time and experiencing them too with all the energy and emotion of youth.


In Meaulnes, which is the story of an intense youthful friendship that involves as well an almost too-adult love-affair, Alain-Fournier creates a consistent atmosphere of excitement and adventure tinged with the fearfulness and sense of imminent tragedy that is the other side of adolescence.


There is also a wonderfully rich picture of (pre-motor car) rural France; of medieval barns, frosty roads, herrings grilled and wool tunics singed by the old schoolroom stove, a perfect sense of a world of routine, homely, charming things, written with the greatest poignancy and nostalgia, in humble acceptance of the enormous and invisible value of simple things.


At the centre of this story, as there must be in any great story, is a profound mystery; at one and the same time the mystery of a disappeared first love for which the book’s young hero Meaulnes Meaulnes suffers tremendous anguish — an anguish that subsequently dooms the ‘happy’ reunion of the lovers — and the great mystery of love itself and lying beyond that the even greater, and perhaps for a male writer even more important, mystery of friendship.


One of the wonders of this beautiful book is the way it slips back and forth between the adolescent’s uncynical view of the world, as when Meaulnes exalts the mythic chalice of loyal friendship and a child’s narrower more concrete view, always seeking (and in this book always finding) more tangible marvels in a satchel, as when a schoolboy called ‘the Gypsy’ produces ‘a penholder with views...by closing one eye and looking through a little spyhole in the handle you could see a blurred and distorted image of the Basilica of Lourdes and other unknown monuments’.


Undoubtedly one of the great books of this century — don’t let anything or anybody rob you of the intense pleasure of knowing it.

‘Several times on their way back from Le Vieux-Nançy, Dumas and he had been intrigued by the old grey turret visible above the fir trees. There in the middle of the woods was a labyrinth of ruined buildings that could easily be explored while the owners were away. One day one of the keepers, to whom they had given a lift, had taken them inside this strange property. But since then everything had been pulled down; people said that there was practically nothing left except the farm and a small pleasure-house. But the inhabitants had not changed: an old retired officer who was almost bankrupt, and his daughter.

He went on and on.... I was listening carefully, vaguely aware that he was talking about something that seemed very familiar, when suddenly and quite naturally — which is how the most extraordinary things always happen—Jasmin turned to me and, touching my arm as if struck by a thought that had never occurred to him before, said:

Listen, I think that must have been the place that Meaulnes found—you know, Big Meaulnes?

Yes, he went on, as I did not reply,... and I remember that the keeper mentioned a son, an odd person who had all sorts of peculiar ideas...

But I was not listening to him any more; the moment he suggested it I knew that he had guessed right and that here before my very eyes, far from Meaulnes and any hope of following it up, the way to that nameless Domain had just been revealed — clear and straightforward like any familiar road.’ p132-133