"Une riviere verte et silencieuse" by Hubert Mingarelli

Prepare to be impressed. Rather than spending six years on my second book in French, it only took me just over six months to read this one! (Insert winky face here.) Never mind that at only 124 pages it was shorter than the first one; it wasn't that much shorter. 

I've read three other books by Hubert Mingarelli (all expertly translated into English by my favorite French-to-English translator who also happens to be the best French-to-English translator in the world as well as the best husband I've ever had), but somehow I only managed to blog about one of them. No idea how that happened. But A Green and Silent River is in a similar vein: brief, subtle, intense. Luckily for me, Mingarelli's books are written in simple, almost sparse prose. Unlike the others, however, this one is not associated with World War II. (Yay!)

AGASR (or URVES?) is told from the perspective of a young boy named Primo who lives with his father (as far as I remember, the existence or fate of his mother is never mentioned). The pair have fallen on hard times since the father lost his job at the local air-compressor factory, although they have a plan to make some money by growing and selling cuttings from the climbing rose bush that grows in their backyard. Occasionally the father is hired to do odd jobs like mowing lawns; Primo spends most of his free time roaming in the fields of tall grass behind the houses on their street. He creates a tunnel there for himself, grass stalks meeting over his head, his thoughts his only companion. 

This is a book that seemed so deeply rooted in reality that I wondered if it was autobiographical, or at least partially so. I can imagine a young Hubert as Primo. Unfortunately, Mingarelli's brief Wikipedia entry doesn't answer that question.

I think my next French book is about teenagers and possibly full of slang, so that may be a challenge. We shall see.