Night had fallen last December when I left the Musée Carnavalet after attending an exhibit on La Régence, a period in French history that marks the dawn of the Enlightenment. Despite the darkness, the streets of the Marais were still bustling with activity and I felt the same pull to linger outdoors that I do on warm evenings in June. It wasn’t long, however, before I came upon the vibrant facade of La Mouette Rieuse, a delightful bookstore/gift shop/café. Always eager to explore any venue relating to books, I entered to check it out.
Thirty minutes later, I emerged with Le Grand Monde, by Pierre Lemaitre. I’d seen Lemaitre’s bestsellers on several occasions but had never read anything by the famous author and screenwriter. Le Grand Monde‘s back cover promised to deliver a fast-paced crime novel, human comedy, and history book, rolled into one. I can happily report that the hype lived up to my expectations.
Lemaitre’s writing is engaging and accessible, a critical factor for a non-native speaker given that Le Grand Monde is over 700 pages. Here Lemaitre tells the story of two generations of the Pelletier family (also my maternal grandfather‘s last name). The action kicks off in Beirut, in the immediate aftermath of World War II, where Louis and Angèle Pelletier have raised their four children. Louis runs a prosperous soap factory that he intends to entrust to his oldest child, Jean.
Jean’s lack of talent and motivation render him a useless successor to the family’s internationally successful commerce. To escape his father’s scrutiny, he marries the disagreeable Genviève who believes she’s marrying up and the couple moves to Paris. The reader soon learns that a darker motivation lies behind Jean’s flight—one much more sinister than dodging his father’s disillusionment.
Enter child number 2, François, an aspiring journalist who embodies the passion and talent sorely absent in his older brother. Again, wanting nothing to do with the manufacture of soap, François likewise heads to Paris, hoping to gain the experience necessary to land a position with a major newspaper. Like his older brother, however, François has difficulty finding employment. Hopes had been high after the war but re-establishing a vibrant economy has proven much harder than anticipated.
Le métro était bondé, les visages moroses. À son arrivée, en septembre 1946, Paris lui était apparu comme une ville grise, épuisée. L’euphorie de la Libération, toute faite d’espoir et d’enthousiasme, était retombée comme un soufflé. Paris avait l’air vieux. Confronté aux privations, au rationnement, aux difficultés de transport, au chômage et au logement précaire quand ce n’était pas à la misère, l’optimisme de la victoire avait cédé le pas à l’inquiétude, aux expédients, à la même débrouillardise qu’en temps de guerre, « c’était bien la peine d’avoir vécu l’Occupation pour en arriver là », c’est ce que François lisait sur les visages.
— Extrait de Le Grand Monde, par Pierre Lemaitre
The metro was packed, faces dejected. When [Fran çois] arrived, in September 1946, Paris seemed grey to him, an exhausted city. The euphoria of the Libération, built upon hope and enthusiasm, had fallen like a soufflé. Paris seemed old. Confronted with shortages, rationing, transportation problems, unemployment, and housing insecurity—if not total destitution—optimism and victory had yielded to worry, shortcuts, and the same improvisations required in times of war. It was worth having lived through the Occupation to get there, was what François read in people’s expressions.
— Excerpt from Le Grand Monde, by Pierre Lemaitre
Resigned to their children’s eventual departure from the life they’d worked so hard to establish, Louis and Angèle wish their third son well when he heads to Indochina. Étienne has decided to accept a job at the French agency in Saigon that oversees trade. The position will help him track down his Belgian lover, Raymond, who is missing after joining the French Foreign Legion to fight against the Viet Minh. Louis tries to capitalize on the departure of his youngest son by assigning him a task that might result in at least one of his heirs taking over the family business. At his father’s request, Étienne half-heartedly agrees to look into the logistics of opening a new branch of the soap company in southeast Asia.
Upon Étienne’s arrival, the war of independence is gathering momentum in the northern part of what is now Vietnam. Meanwhile, the streets of Saigon are largely peaceful and prosperous.
Il se rendait, à cette époque, dans un établissement luxueux fréquenté par l’élite, avec des alcôves chargées de tissus, de coussins, de guéridons et de grandes couchettes ouvragées où des jeunes femmes silencieuses, adroites comme personne, vous faisaient allonger, veillaient à la parfaite position du coussin sous votre tête, prenaient délicatement vos chevilles dans leurs petites mains pour donner à vos jambes la posture idéale puis, face à vous, préparaient avec une calme dextérité des pipes d’une drogue idyllique qui vous emplissait d’un bien-être total.
—Extrait de Le Grand Monde, par Pierre Lemaitre
[Étienne] would visit, at the time, a luxurious establishment frequented by the elite, with alcoves that were loaded with fabrics, pillows, end tables, and finely crafted daybeds where silent young women, uniquely versed and adept, had you lie down, assuring the perfect position of the pillow under your head, delicately taking your ankles in their small hands to place your legs in the ideal position then, while facing you, would serenely and dexterously prepare pipes with an idyllic drug that would fill you with a feeling of total contentment.
—Excerpt from Le Grand Monde, by Pierre Lemaitre
Lastly, 18-year-old Hélène agonizes over her plight as her brothers head to faraway lands while she is left behind to finish her studies. The boldness and propensity for risk that underlie her parents’ prosperity are completely lost on her and she views the older couple’s life in Beirut as humdrum and leading nowhere. She longs to join her favorite sibling, Étienne, who sends her letters revealing the young functionary’s convictions and sensitivities. When a move to Indochina proves impossible, Hélène too escapes to Paris, where François, nearly penniless himself, rescues her from a potential life in the gutter.
Lemaitre jumps between these three exotic locales, Beruit, Paris, and Saigon, rendering a snapshot of French sovereignty post-WWII and pre-decolonization. Many of the names, events, and organizations referenced throughout the book are factual and I found myself frequently Googling to learn further details. Not that those details were needed to hold the story together. Le Grand Monde stands on its own, but it repeatedly inspired me to learn more.
Of particular interest, were the chapters featuring Étienne. As the daughter of anti-Vietnam-war activists, I hadn’t known much about France’s tenure in this part of the world beyond the notion that the United States seemed to have picked up where the French left off. I also was clueless about the Western financial market’s exploitation of artificially inflated currency exchange rates. I plan to write more about this aspect of the story in a future post.
Overall, Le Grand Monde is a fun and informative thriller that expanded my understanding of France’s colonial presence in the world on the eve of its empire’s collapse. If the story sounds intriguing but you aren’t willing to wrestle with a sizeable tome in French, the book is also available in English as The Wide World. No matter the language you choose to consume this entertaining saga, you’ll be adding to your French cultural fluency and deepening your understanding of mankind’s innate ability to rationalize injustice and violence as long as it serves its insatiable appetite for power.
Endnote
At the risk of discouraging interested readers, I’d be remiss if I didn’t disclose that Le Grand Monde is part of a three-book trilogy that unfolds during Les Trente Glorieuses, the thirty-year period of economic growth in France between 1945 and 1975. I hadn’t known this until I was almost finished and realized that not all plotlines would be sewn up before the end. The second tome, Le Silence et la Colère, was released in 2023 and has yet to be translated to English.
The immediate aftermath of World War II seems to have been a time of exhaustion and privation almost everywhere except in the US. France and the UK were suffering ongoing shortages, and the loss of their empires and world-power status. It was that situation that led my parents to emigrate from the UK to the US. Lemaitre’s characters seem to have likewise sought a better life via emigration, only to find that they had not made the best choices of destination.
Saigon actually is made to sound like the most cheerful of the three settings, yet of course we all know what was coming eventually. One can imagine the likely fate of a gay Frenchman after the eventual communist take-over, if he had been so foolish as to stay there.
I notice you describe the book as a crime novel and a thriller, yet such themes are not mentioned in your review. Perhaps it would have been impossible to discuss them without giving away too much?
There are a lot of crimes committed in this book, from black market commerce, to bribes, to religious charlatanry, to wholesale murder. You’re right that I found it difficult to talk about any of the particulars without stealing some of the surprises that I enjoyed while reading.
Étienne’s homosexuality never becomes an overt problem for him because, like most homosexuals of that time period, he hides his relationships. Even people that disapproved of what was at that time considered a lifestyle choice, often turned a blind eye rather than working assiduously to confirm their suspicions.
Saigon might well be the most cheerful of the three settings, but in the same way that a casino is more cheerful than a newsroom. Cheerful settings can often have disturbing underpinnings.
It’s interesting to learn that your parents emigrated from the UK. Have you written about this on your blog? If so, feel free to post a link or two here.
Thanks. It’s certainly true that cheerful settings can have undercurrents that lead to a different fate eventually. Kyiv in Ukraine seemed like a cheerful enough place in 2007 when I went there. One never knows what is coming.
I haven’t posted much about the family history. Maybe someday I will.
You traveled to Kyiv? Sounds like a very interesting trip. Have you posted about that?
I did write this post about it right after coming back. I don’t know how many people ever saw it — my blog was relatively new then and hadn’t built up much of a readership yet.
An interesting book, Carol. An intrigue that probably crosses my parents’ path. We lived in Pakistan in 1954, when Dien Bien Phu fell. My father used to say that he shipped soldiers to Indochina and coffins back. He also mentioned that he had to greet General (Maréchal) de Lattre de Tassigny at the airport every time he stopped over on his way to Saïgon and back.
I too (little me and my baby sis) lived in Saïgon a few months in 1956, since our house in Cambodia was not ready… No memories of that of course… (I only remember the baby tiger in Cambodia)
700 pages? Hmmm.
All well with you at home?
Yes, I thought of you and your parents while reading. You have a similarly interesting story to tell only it’s not fiction!
Tout va bien chez moi, merci. Et toi?
Ça va merci. A la “campagne” depuis une semaine. Far from the madding crowd.
And yes, ours is non-fiction. Which I manage to write here and there in bits and pieces.