From Publishers Weekly
Mirbeau (1848-1917), author of The Diary of a Chambermaid, was infamous in fin de si?cle society in Paris. This novel about the son of an ironmonger completes his trilogy of semiautobiographical novels and here is translated into English for the first time. S?bastien Roch is brought to grim life in mid-19th-century France, as the boy endures a rugged education at a Jesuit school and dies on the battlefield a young man. Born in Pervench?res, S?bastien grows up a fresh-faced, blond and healthy child. While a student, he meets Bolorec, who remains a friend for life. S?bastien studies the bloody exploits of Marat and Robespierre, wonders at the "two husbandless girls" who are sisters of a classmate and has a sexual awakening "beneath the veil of divine love." As the years pass, the innocent boy grows complicated and is expelled from school, still too ignorant of evil to suspect that his expulsion might have been prompted by a priest's sexual arousal. S?bastien refuses to go to another Catholic school, and falls into an idyllic romance with his friend Marguerite before becoming a soldier. Oozing radiant health, innocence and promise, S?bastien is a sympathetic hero repeatedly caught in the world's traps, which he spends his short life trying to escape. His story is clearly focused and features a cerebral tone and a finely wrought tempo. A languid beginning gives way to a byzantine middle, while an abrupt, violent and senseless end makes a powerful statement about 19th-century France, democratic ideals and a young man's sacrifice. (May)
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From Kirkus Reviews
The “decadent” Mirbeau (1848–1917) is best known for his florid exercises in sensuality, Torture Garden and The Diary of a Chamber-maid (this latter the source of two famous films). Here, an (1890) novel, the completion of a partially autobiographical trilogy, portrays the foreshortened manhood of the eponymous Sébastien, a hopeful French provincial youngster who endures brutally humble beginnings and the various hardships of a Jesuit college, then perishes on a WWI battlefield. Sébastien is a kind of tabula rasa onto whom others' romantic and sexual longings are projected, without his full complicity with (or understanding of) the passions he innocently arouses. Mirbeau's superbly controlled period piece is, accordingly, both a keen portrayal of the idealism and solipsism of youth and a welcome reminder of the genius of a writer who has probably always been rather seriously underrated. --
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