CONTENTS PAGE
Please click on the chosen topic below to access the notes on my French Literature Internet Site
1)
Summary of the novel in English
2)
Background notes3) Biography of Marcel Pagnol
In this autobiographical novel, Marcel Pagnol is telling the story of the years when he was nine and ten (1904/1905). His family rented a house in the hills of Provence. “Le Château de ma Mère is a gentle story of childhood, told with a lot of humour. The climax of the book tells of a very traumatic experience that Marcel and his family endured, the memory of which was revived for Marcel over thirty years later by a remarkable coincidence,
This incident reflects an emotional event in Pagnol’s true life story and is recounted in the concluding two pages of the novel. .
Picture left – Joseph and Augustine Pagnol, overloaded with
baggage, anxiously lead their children across the private estate of one of the four
country houses, through which they trespassed as a shortcut to their holiday
home. This DVD cover is for the film made by Yves Robert in 1990.---------------------------------------------------------------------
Map of the location of the Pagnol holiday home:
