A review by markp
Jean-Christophe - I by Gilbert Cannan, Romain Rolland
3.0
Rating Jean-Christophe is a bit difficult, as it consists of ten short novels of varying quality. The first four books all merit four stars, but the next six are more on the order of two or three apiece. Those first four books form a lovely portrait of a sensitive child, a prodigy whose immense talent is counterbalanced by his bearish personality. But then things change in the fifth volume.
The most noticeable change is that our protagonist moves from Germany to France. This is important because Romain Rolland was French, and he uses this change of setting to regale the reader with pages upon pages of tedious nit-picking as he catalogs his every complaint with French society. This tedium does come interspersed with much better scenes of the young artist's life, and there was enough of this to keep me reading. But after a while, Rolland seems to lose interest in depicting Jean-Christophe's creative life. Instead we get various subplots and vague mentions of what he is composing, with no further examination of music or composition.
There are other minor complaints to lodge against Rolland: he frequently relies on blatant contrivance to move his plots forward (in the penultimate volume the plot contrivances plunge into outright absurdity), and he has not problem with making his characters act uncharacteristically in order to convenience the plot.
Which is all a long-winded way of saying that I would certainly recommend the first four volumes of Jean-Christophe, but the remainder is for completionists only.
The most noticeable change is that our protagonist moves from Germany to France. This is important because Romain Rolland was French, and he uses this change of setting to regale the reader with pages upon pages of tedious nit-picking as he catalogs his every complaint with French society. This tedium does come interspersed with much better scenes of the young artist's life, and there was enough of this to keep me reading. But after a while, Rolland seems to lose interest in depicting Jean-Christophe's creative life. Instead we get various subplots and vague mentions of what he is composing, with no further examination of music or composition.
There are other minor complaints to lodge against Rolland: he frequently relies on blatant contrivance to move his plots forward (in the penultimate volume the plot contrivances plunge into outright absurdity), and he has not problem with making his characters act uncharacteristically in order to convenience the plot.
Which is all a long-winded way of saying that I would certainly recommend the first four volumes of Jean-Christophe, but the remainder is for completionists only.