1* to Pastoral Symphony, really weird relies on a disability in uncomfortable way, with not very nice age-gap relationships. overall probably just aged very very poorly
3* to Isabelle, enjoyable good atmosphere but very paperback-y ( )

Two wonderful novellas, though LSP gets most of the praise. Certainly it sticks in one's mind more than Isabelle, but I think I'd rather re-read the latter: SP is a little too obvious. My rediscovery of Gide has been the reading triumph of the year for me so far, and these two only help that along: clarity, intelligence, some fun and games with forms and frame narratives, but no desire to blow the reader's mind. Most importantly of all, Gide is a dialectical novelist; each story is a careful staging of an important, intellectual opposition (here, religiosity/sensuality; idealism/realism), and each story allows us to see that the triumph of one pole is inevitably disastrous. ( )

Two great novellas, the stronger for me being the first, in which a priest helps a deaf and dumb girl reclaim her life, but with tragic results. ( )

"La Symphonie Pastorale" is pretty terrible. It concerns a young woman blind who was raised in subhuman conditions by her grandmother and, when discovered by a local minister, seems little more mentally advanced than a wild animal. The premise, which parallels several real life "raised by wolves" tales, has some promise, but Gidé never makes a real effort to understand what this experience might have done to her, or how it might have made her different. Within a few pages, she's speaking fluent French and discussing European art. "La Symphonie Pastorale" those novels in which "fictional" characters are used as the mouthpieces for someone else's ideas, its anguished moral tone, stiff diction, and painfully obvious mechanics make it a downright excruciating read.

So I was rather surprised that "Isabelle" turned out to be so enjoyable. A story that artfully paints the decline of an aristocratic class and the passing of a way of life, it makes an interesting companion to novels like Vita Sackville-West's "The Edwardians." "Isabelle" is rather more comic and, in a way, less biting than that work. There's a tragedy at the book's center, but Gide often plays up the ridiculous, theatrical aspects of the inhabitants of the decaying French manor house where the action is set. It's also nice to see that this book's disabled character, a lame young boy called Casimir, is treated with much more depth here: his physical infirmity seems merely to complement his lonely and isolated existence and generally timid character. The book features a well-executed plot twist at the end and a touch of real sadness as the narrator witnesses the bankrupt estate's great old trees being taken down in order to pay its creditors. Read this "symphony," but skip the first. ( )