Most Interesting Books of 2006
The End of Youth
The Life and Work of Alain-Fournier
by Robert Gibson
Published by Impress Books
The End of Youth is the definitive English biography of Alain-Fournier (1886-1914), author of the 1913 novel The Wanderer, alternatively titled Le Grand Meaulnes. In an essay titled "The New Biography", Virginia Woolf insists that every great biography must reveal two faces of its subject: truth and personality. Gibson shines in both realms, giving us enormous amounts of expertly organized factual information, all the while accomplishing the far more difficult task of re-creating the author's personality: letting us see and feel the world as Fournier might have experienced it. For authors, this book is a goldmine of advice, thanks to Fournier's letters to his friend Jacques Riviere, and to Gibson's keen insights about The Wanderer and its complex themes: youth, love, authorship, French literature, and the roman personnel. This is Gibson's third book on this subject — earlier bios were titled The Quest of Alain-Fournier and The Land Without A Name. The End of Youth supersedes the previous books, enhanced by a deluge of new information about the author, including the discovery of his body on a WW I battlefield, more than 70 years after he died. Fournier was killed in battle in 1914, at the age of 28. His lone book lives on, thanks to its perennial power to evoke the mysterious land of our adolescence, and to Gibson's stellar appreciations.
— Michael Pastore
