The Child and the River-Fast Shipping

Description

A new translation of an evocative, Huckleberry Finn–esque French bestseller about a young farmboy, the river where he is forbidden to play, and the adventures that ensue when he disobeys his family’s wishes.

The Child and the River tells a simple but haunting , a boy growing up on a farm in the south of France, ispermitted by his parents to play wherever he likes—only never by theriver. Prohibition turns into temptation: Pascalet dreams of nothing somuch as heading down to the river, and one day, with his parents away,he does. Wandering along the bank, intoxicated with newfound freedom, hefalls asleep in a rowboat and wakes to find himself caught in rapidsand run aground on an island where a band of Gypsies has pitched camptogether with their trained bear. Hiding in the underbrush, Pascaletobserves that the group includes a boy his age, who, after receiving awhipping, has been left tied to a post. This is Gatzo, and as soon asnight falls, Pascalet sets him loose. The boys escape in a boat andspend an idyllic week on the river. But then the mysterious “puppeteerof souls” arrives, bringing their adventure to an end, and Pascalet mustgo back home to face the music. Has he seen the last of his new friend?

Long hailed as a sort of French Huckleberry Finn, The Child and the River is, as Henri Bosco himself once wrote in a letter to a friend, “a novelvery good, I think, for children, adolescents, and poets.” A beguilingadventure story, it is also beautifully written, full of keenly observeddetails of the river’s wilds, well captured by Joyce Zonana’s newtranslation.