When I received the book, I didn't understand what this face with big eyes and no chin was expressing, but after reading the book, I looked at this face and couldn't help but shed tears. I have witnessed the fall of a life, and how can man be indifferent to the death of an innocent of his kind?
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Some book reviews I write very restrained, because I appreciate the original author's words and sentences, I don't need to say too much, everyone can read his original text, good or bad at a glance. But foreign literature like "Goodbye to Heaven" cannot avoid the problem of translation, especially French literature, in the "letter", "da" and "ya", ya is very important, this kind of elegance, more importantly, an atmosphere, if you read less French literature, you may be difficult to pay attention to the dramatic atmosphere flowing between the lines. At first reading, you may not be able to read it and feel procrastinating, but believe me, read it, you will be amazed. It's an adventure novel (Roman d'Aventure), an epic that can be passed down from generation to generation. "I belong to the romantic novel genre, and I like that there are characters in novels, stories, climaxes, surprises, and powerful protagonists." Author Pierre Lemet says so.
This book expresses many themes, and if you want to talk about it from a profound perspective, it can be pulled to a very high level.
The protagonist is a typical warrior returning from the battlefield, not a hero, but a man who cannot find his place in the society in which he lives. The novel begins a few days before the end of the war, does not depict the war in a positive way, the author puts the angle on the deceased, he is not interested in the war itself, but the end of the war. We praise the dead, but we don't know what to do with the survivors. The state has no gratitude to the soldiers who have returned from the trenches. It was a very unstable and painful time. France in 1919 abandoned the survivors, not wanting to see their frightening "disfigured faces." After going through hell, the state gave them only 52 francs, or a poor unwashed military coat, to compensate. On the third day of receiving the army coat, the narrator of the book laughed at himself by saying that he should have chosen 52 francs instead of a military coat that symbolized the history of the army.
Soldiers have no sustenance in their hearts after the war, and want to rely on the past wars to locate their own value, but they did not expect that their motherland would be dismissive of such "surviving people" as them.
The author conveys a deep sense of injustice in the book. The government will build 36,000 monuments, but the government will only pay 52 francs per veteran, and the government will not be able to find jobs for them, provide shelter, pay salaries and pay veterans. We praise the dead, but we feel that the living are a burden and a bad person. Like many "excluded people" today, they are a group of people who have not received social credit. This social system has led to unstable groups such as veterans, who are parasites in society on the boundaries of "excluded". In the novel, the group chooses to confront the harsh reality, plunge into a fraud, and use the most popular "patriotism" of the time as a springboard to fight against this so-called "patriotism", and they themselves are the ones who won the war. This is the greatest contradiction in this post-war history.
But if we shift our focus a little further down to each individual, you'll see why I describe this book as telling a heroic history of adventure.
Pradelle is the villain character throughout the book, representing the image of an evil military maniac. On the eve of the Franco-German armistice, under the consensus of all the soldiers that it was much more foolish to die on the last day of the war than on the first day of the war," he called two innocent soldiers to the front line to reconnoiter, killed the two soldiers from behind, blamed their deaths on the Germans on the other side, and forcibly provoked the war. The twin protagonists, Maial and Edward, are devastated by this conflict, leaving a lifetime of physical and psychological shadows. The tragedy of these two people began by witnessing Pradelle's despicable deeds.
Pradelle was successfully portrayed as a face-slapping character during the war years. Every reader will grit their teeth in hatred for this "good guys fall into trouble, bad guys ascend to heaven" plot. They see war as a way for themselves to prosper, do not hesitate to exchange human lives for their own status, live a drunken life after the war, and choose bribes and fraud when the country is in urgent need of reconstruction.
The author has arranged for us a suitable hero to crush all this and declare war on all this injustice.
Fight fraud with fraud, use your means to bring you down.
Shortly after the war, monuments to the dead and excavations of coffins formed a sizable market. 750,000 bodies were placed in makeshift cemeteries, and they had to be exhumed for coffins. France built 30,000 monuments in a very short period of time. Pradelle profited by making coffins that cut corners. The need for monuments is a relentless satire on the living restored soldiers. The living cannot yet be treated well, but they must sacrifice the dead. Industry loves war: before the war, during the war, after the war! I often think of the words of Anatole France: "You think you died for your country, you died for the industrialists."
The narrative of "Goodbye in Heaven" is very special, with a romantic dramatic color. Every sentence can arouse the reader's infinite reverie, like a long shot in a movie. Popular novels, especially this epic novel with romantic overtones, can usually attract people from three layers of shallow to deep content. The first category is the average reader, attracted by the twists and turns of the plot full of conflict and confrontation. The second category is readers who are interested in the social issues behind the plot. They either empathize with the incident, have been in the same trap, or have been victims/perpetrators themselves. The third category, in which the author himself speaks, "will recognize that this is an imitation of Proust." ”
"Goodbye to Heaven" is particularly brilliant in its portrayal of the characters. Whether it is the contrast between the image of the rich disciple of the protagonist Edward before the war and the painful heart of the "masked man" after the war, or the description of the investigation of the case by the supporting inspector Merlin, it is extremely vivid and can even be described as gorgeous. And the rebellious spirit that pervades everywhere makes people feel more complicated emotions about Edward and Mayar's characters in addition to pity. They have also done bad things to rob the weak, and they have also hidden their joy and anger under the mask, they have used the "Monument of the Dead" to defraud the government, and they have rented a room in the largest hotel in Paris for a party after getting the money, preparing to leave the country after three days. This was what he had expected, until Edward learned that Pradelle, the initiator of his half-manhood, had become his brother-in-law and had taken over everything that should have belonged to him.
What he and Mayar lost, they could never get back. Dalesy left Mayar, the man who had used her as a spiritual sustenance during the war. Edward's sister married Pradelle, though she did not love her. Edward had more than a dozen masks, but he couldn't find a face that could face his family. War leaves them with nothing, and their souls are as broken as their bodies. He even felt that only Mayar was the proof that he was alive. So after getting his father's approval, Edward issued a vague "thank you" from the throat that no longer existed, and chose to jump down from the hotel balcony.
On that day, he was wearing a birdman mask, and the eagle's sharp beak was very eye-catching, and his father still recognized his son's turquoise blue eyes at a glance.
Maybe at this moment, Edward changed back to himself, he was still that Edward Perrick, and when he died in this moment, he could keep that identity forever.
The jawless monster that lives on morphine is dead, Mayar, my buddy, let's see you in heaven.