Cronus' Children by Yves Navarre (1980)

I have two opposing reactions to this novel. One is a delighted celebration of its poetic elegance, and the plangency of its intense descriptions. The other is irritation with its typifying Frrrrrench pseudo-philosophic contrarieties. This is the story of the Prouillans, a French family, through a good part of the twentieth century, concentrating in the main on the period after the second world war. The central figure of the family is Henri Prouillan, a quiet, controlled, knowing man; a government minister at one time, respected by the public, looming large in his family as someone who can't be denied. His children also play a large part - Luc, following in his footsteps (sometimes without realising it); Sebastien, rebelling a little, and becoming a sailor; Claire, rebelling a fair amount, artistic and feminist, and raising three children; and, most crucially, the youngest, Bertrand - the most intellectual, slightly unstable, and homosexual. These four feel crushed by their father's certainties and his unvocalised sense of superiority. There is invested in them a sense of constant tussling with their father's need for position and decorousness. The core drama of the piece comes when a fix is purposed for Bertrand's instability. It is a lobotomising operation to be conducted in Barcelona, and there is a strong undercurrent that in fact Henri intends it as a fix also for Bertrand's homosexuality, given that his son's increasingly wild and eroticised behaviour could be embarrassing in his respectable circles, and could jeopardise any return to the ministry. The fact that Bertrand himself agrees to go ahead with the operation, presumably in the hope of getting better, is a complicating factor. Most of the action of the novel is seen from after this time, looking back on the events. The other children blame themselves for not stopping the operation, and therefore for the hugely compromised Bertrand who returns from Spain. Much of this is magnificently realised in prose of superb tone and rolling beauty, revealing lives of realistically fractured intent and interrupted flow. There are moments, though, when Navarre shows the marks of his time, in "poetic" statements like 'The time for amorous gestures has nothing to do with human time' - seemingly pregnant with meaning, but actually nonsense - very emblematic of the 60s and 70s and their slightly loose-brained gestural emptiness paraded as philosophic-poetic 'riffing'. But those elements aside, a fascinating book.