The Wide World
A Novel
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
The "jubilant and exciting" saga of one prominent French family in postwar Paris, Beirut, and Saigon—an electrifying novel of passion, greed, murder, and revenge (Sandrine Bajos, Le Parisien)
The Pelletiers are a prominent French family living in 1948 Beirut. The patriarch, Louis, has built a successful business that he hopes to pass on to his eldest son. With no head for management, Jean nearly sinks the company, then marries a materialistic young woman who insists they emigrate to Paris and join high society. But there is another reason Jean must leave—he has committed a terrible crime.
Youngest son Etienne is sent to make his fortune in Saigon. There, he begins investigating a covert scheme to channel smuggled goods and cash to the Viet Minh. But the evidence he collects presents a real threat to his own life.
François, the middle brother, arrives in Paris and becomes a journalist. His career takes off when he starts covering the brutal murder of an actress that seems part of a pattern of killings. But the killer he’s chasing may be closer to him than he realizes.
Eighteen-year Hélène follows her brothers to Paris seeking adventure and soon throws herself into the dissolute life of an art student. But she must grow up fast when she is called upon to travel to Indochina and continue the investigation Etienne started.
Epic in scope, and a vivid depiction of French life in the booming postwar years, The Wide World is a riveting saga that is at once gripping and classic.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Lemaitre (Mirror of Our Sorrows) charts in his overlong latest the crimes and scandals of a French family spread across the globe in the years after WWII. It's 1946, and Jean Pelletier, the oldest of three brothers, is an abject failure, trapped in a loveless marriage and running his father's Beirut-based soap-making conglomerate into the ground. After he indiscriminately murders a young woman, he and his wife move to France, where he goes on to kill three more young women. When his brother François, a journalist in Paris, begins publishing a series of articles about one of Jean's victims, a French movie star, in 1948, his secret threatens to come to light. Meanwhile in Saigon, youngest brother Étienne is grieving his lover's untimely death and determined to expose a major currency trafficking scandal. Lemaitre's postwar historical narrative spans various family members across three continents, though he reserves his sharpest words and keenest emotions for Étienne's story ("Here in Indochina... murder is simply part of the grammar," remarks a character sardonically). Unfortunately, the meandering narrative doesn't quite have enough momentum to keep readers hanging on, and significant events are resolved in a less-than-satisfactory manner. This lengthy family saga ultimately fails to deliver on the promise of Lemaitre's interwar novels.
