This is what I'm desperately trying to avoid!
The last two books for my reading group happen to be books I have already read, which has given me a break from these 'obligatory' reads, so for some dumb reason I decided to go back to the book group at my workplace- completely daft! Hence me reading a really obscure American novel that apparently some genius ex-pupil of my school recommended to the librarian instead of getting on with my 1001 quest! Seriously pants on head retarded!
DERP!
So 'The Chateau' is about an American couple who thought it would be a good idea to travel to France for an extended holiday in 1948. They spend the entire book slightly puzzled about why everyone doesn't love them as the great liberating American heroes and why the trains aren't running and why everything looks a bit bomby and everybody is poor and sort of fed up with the Germans. Sweet Jesus this book does very little for the 'Americans abroad' image!
Is pretty much what the French do throughout this novel
Literally these guys spend a few months in France (and other countries, but for some reason Maxwell decides not to tell us about that) travelling round and being socially awkward. Very little actually happens cause this is one of those books that is supposed to be SUBTLE and CLEVER and therefore BORING! Maxwell gives us lots of tiny, insignificant details about train times and luggage and nylon stockings (which these super awkward American's bring along to give to their chambermaids, and then wonder why people think they are patronising!) but fails to tell us about stuff that might actually be interesting. For example they are constantly eating large multi course dinners or having to get ration books, but not once do they say what they are eating! I mean you go to a country like France after a lifetime of American cookery (that's not me being patronising, just saying it's gonna be, ya know, different!) and you would think it might be worth commenting on. If it's a choice between a detailed description of lavish French cookery or train times, I know which one I would rather read about.
Hi, I'm William Maxwell, pleased to meet you.
So this pair of Americans spend most of the book living in this chateau (hence the title) with a snotty aristocrat that has fallen on hard times since the war and seems to slightly resent having to open up her fine and wonderful abode to gawking foreigners and poor people. A set up for hilarity you say? You could make a fine sit-com out of this you say? The more grown up and literary of you say what an excellent medium for discussing the complicated relationship between members of a country and its liberator as well as the class divide in modern Europe. Well you would all be disappointed, because excellent as all those things would be, Maxwell squanders his opportunity and instead just makes the whole experience awkward, boring and tedious. There is some apparent secret about how the family lost their money which is hinted at as being terrible and is built up to be some grand revelation for the end of the book, but even this disappoints. The narrative closes with no answer to this, but then in some strange, slightly tacked on bit at the end it is revealed, and it's really nothing special. Really. Also the tacked on bit at the end smacks of Maxwell getting totally bored with the whole thing, failing to write what was actually going on into the actual story, and creating a short 'conversation' with an anonymous person (surely not the reader, they fell asleep ages ago!) that reveals everything. And hell even the revelations are dull!
why did I write such a long review? This sums it up perfectly.
In conclusion this book sucks. It really sucks. Hella sucks. There is a reason no one has ever heard of it.
