Immortelles

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Octogenarian author Marokvia offers a luminous evocation of her childhood in a small French village, a period shadowed by WWI and her mother's depressive illnesses, but enhanced by contact with her grandparents, whose sturdy peasant values have become more meaningful with time. In lean but lyrical prose, Marokvia manages to convey a child's bewildered impressions of the adult worldwhy her mother often took to her bed and turned her face to the wall, what happened the day the family doctor sent a mysterious letter after her mother had secretly visited him. Mingled here are lucid memories of refugees fed and sent onward and of soldiers succored and returned to battle. Foremost in Marokvia's life, however, were her beloved dog, Medor, her nurturing grandfather, who opened "the vast window of the world" through books, and her friend Odette, with whom she was locked in a cemetery at night, near the grave of a seven-year-old classmate who had died of a weak heart (an ailment that afflicted the author as well). Marokvia clearly remembers seeing the dreaded will-o'-the-wisp, or feu follet, "a little blue light dancing among the graves" that "was worse than seeing a ghost.'' She did see other ghosts, and she describes those fleeting episodes with a magical intensity. Later, when Odette died in her 20s, Marokvia marked the end of her own youth. Yet this book is not lugubrious, but wise and stoic, as she contemplates "losses turned to riches through the glorious illogical alchemy we call memory.'' Marokvia was first published in France more than 60 years ago; one hopes she will share other episodes from her life. (Oct.)

Library Journal

Immortelles are flowers that retain their bright colors after they are dried. In Marokvia's imaginative memoir, immortelles symbolize her bittersweet and everlasting memories of a sheltered childhood in a rural French village just after World War I. A French American known for her juvenile fiction and translations, Marokvia is now in her late seventies; here she recalls the family members and incidents that shaped her personality. Death is one of the most prominent of her childhood memoriesshe laments the loss of her pets, close friends, and her stern and sturdy grandmother. Marokvia's sparse, poetic choice of words reflects her writer's beginnings in English as a children's author. Her literary voice is that of a sensitive, introspective child, and the style captures the confusion and partial understandings of a maturing girl. Her seemingly simple prose has a Dickinsonian quality, causing one to reread, looking for intimations missed at first glance. Recommended for all readers.Carol A. McAllister, Coll. of William & Mary, Williamsburg, Va.

Kirkus Reviews

An elegant evocation of the poetry and pain of childhood in a small French village before and after WW I.

From the vantage point of her 80 years Marokvia recreates and reimagines her often lonely youth. She writes simply but powerfully of life in the isolated village where her father was the town schoolteacher, town secretary, and resident atheist and freethinker. Her mother was often depressed and ill, with little time for her daughter. With her vivid imagination as guide, Marokvia was left to amuse herself and make sense of the confusing adult world, with its contradictory rules and strange behavior. The author confesses that she lost all faith in adults as a five-year- old when the adored family doctor jokingly promised to marry her—and shortly thereafter showed up with a fiancée, crushing the hopes of this serious and literal child. The narrative focuses quite a bit on death, and in a fascinating section, Marokvia describes the visitations of a ghostly child that only she sees—this girl eerily resembles a sturdy- looking schoolmate who has recently died from a heart ailment that the frailer Marokvia also suffered from but survived; this mysterious event was to have a lifelong impact on her. Other parts of the memoir are cheerier: her account of escaping over the wall of her boarding school to sit and read with her beloved grandfather; the joy of walking and bicycling through the nearby woods. Marokvia is particularly good at calling up the sights and smells and sounds of small-town France: the rhythm of rural life, the pleasures of a village parade, the excitement of a train trip, and more seriously, the ravages of a bloody war on this life.

An unusual book that rewards the reader with its lyric prose and quiet grace.