1914
Jean Echenoz
New Press, The
<p>Five Frenchmen go off to war, two of them leaving behind a certain young woman who longs for their return. But the main character in <I>1914</I> is the Great War itself. Jean Echenoz, the multi&#8211;award&#8211;winning French literary magician whose work has been compared to Joseph Conrad and Lawrence Sterne, has brought that deathtrap back to life, leading us gently from a balmy summer day deep into the insatiable&#8212;and still unthinkable&#8212;carnage of trench warfare.<BR>With the delicacy of a miniaturist and with irony both witty and clear&#8211;eyed, the author offers us an intimate epic with the atmosphere of a classic movie: in the panorama of a clear blue sky, a biplane spirals suddenly into the ground; a tardy piece of shrapnel shears the top off a man's head as if it were a soft&#8211;boiled egg; we dawdle dreamily in a spring&#8211;scented clearing with a lonely shell&#8211;shocked soldier strolling innocently to a firing squad ready to shoot him for...</BR></p>