Le Grand Meaulnes is pretty grand!

I finished reading The Lost Domain (or as it was originally titled, Le Grand Meaulnes) last night. It was definitely a tough read, even for being a little tiny baby-sized book. There are two reasons why I think this book was hard for me: 1. It was originally written in French, and although the translation is wonderful, some of the sentences are still a bit off; 2. The time/culture/environment of the story is not familiar to me at all, having never grown up in 1890's France. Now I know that I will probably say this about almost every other book on the list, since most were written/take place a hundred years or more ago. But this book was quite foreign to me, and hard, and so I use those excuses.

With all that said, I enjoyed this book so much that I will most likely be adding it to my book collection. Said collection includes Harry Potter, The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings trilogy, and the Twilight series. Seriously, that's about it. Needless to say, this book will get its very own shelf because the others don't deserve to be near it (don't hate me!).

The Lost Domain is an interesting story narrated by not the main character, but by a character who idolizes the main character so much that no other characters are really examined. Le grand Meaulnes (pronounced like "moan"), as he is called in the story, is the only character that gets any real attention from the narrator. To be honest, I know very little more now about the narrator character than I did when I first started the book. The same is with all the other characters. So much so that I found myself having to go backwards in the book to find answers as to where a certain character came into the story, or the significance of that character.

The book is a romance in the very literal meaning of the word. From the Merriam-Webster dictionary, a romance is (1) : a medieval tale based on legend, chivalric love and adventure, or the supernatural (2) : a prose narrative treating imaginary characters involved in events remote in time or place and usually heroic, adventurous, or mysterious. The Lost Domain is a romance and also a fairy tale, but what makes it truly wonderful and unique is that it includes very real to life themes - sorrow, pain, and death. The addition of the bad makes the good so much more satisfying.

In conclusion, never judge a book by its cover, but especially never judge a book by its size (or lack thereof).