The Devil's Pool - Softcover

Sand Pse, Title George

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1603863672 ISBN 13: 9781603863674

Publisher: Watchmaker Publishing, 2010

Synopsis

An Unabridged Edition To Include Appendix: The Tillage Of The Soil - Father Maurice - Germain, The Skilled Husbandman - Mother Guillette - Petit-Pierre - On The Heath - Underneath The Big Oaks - The Evening Prayer - Despite The Cold - Beneath The Stars - The Belle Of The Village - The Master - The Old Woman - The Return To The Farm - Mother Maurice - Little Marie - APPENDIX : The Wedding Favors - The Wedding - The Cabbage

About this title

Review

'Early deaths and endemic poverty are treated here as part of natural life; and natural life, with its indomitable, instinctive force for continuity, is what she is celebrating...it seems to me a book...worth reading more than once. --Victoria Glendinning

From the Author

To an extent, Sand is writing a fable or parable, to convey the essential goodness and fulfilment that can illuminate such apparently narrow lives, in contract to the ‘fake enlightenment’ of her sophisticated readers. Though she does underline the ugly side of customs such as the arranged marriage, with its potential for exploitation and humiliation, she deliberately highlights the poetic and pure side of rural life, as opposed to squalor and suffering. Early deaths and endemic poverty are treated here as part of natural life; and natural life, with its indomitable, instinctive force for continuity, is what she is celebrating. There is a powerful undercurrent of regret for the disappearance of age-old country customs in her native region; what we would now call the social anthropologist in here is well to the fore in the account of traditional marriage games, tacked on as a coda. She wants rural life to go on in the old predestined way, but with some better understanding of the value of that life.
These seem conservative, even sentimental attitudes for a liberated free-thinking, free-loving, progressive woman like Sand. But the story must also be read as she intended, as an act if empathy with her characters, and a riposte to intellectual arrogance. In any case, we all perversely love what we have chosen to lose – in her case, the simple life. The story was written, originally for magazine publication, at top speed. The unresolved ambivalences and contradictions make The Devil’s pool, as its author knew, an imperfect work of art. It is all the more intriguing for being so. For all its simple charm, it seems to me a book for grown-ups, and worth reading more than once.

Edition details

• Publisher: Watchmaker Publishing
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1603863672
• ISBN 13: 9781603863674
• Binding: Paperback
• Illustrator: Abot E
• Number of pages: 116