When Tim mentioned our planned France holiday on a night out back in August, a friend recommended a book set (roughly) in the region of France we were heading to. Which seemed like an excellent idea for a holiday read. I duly bought The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers’ Guild by Mathias Enard (translated from French by Frank Wynne) and started reading it during our idyllic week on l’Ile d’Yeu.

I didn’t completely love this book, but it definitely added a certain something being in the same landscapes I was reading about. The story is (mostly) set in La Pierre-Saint-Christophe, a small village at the border of the Vendée and Deux-Sevres departements in west France. It’s a rural landscape of farms and villages, getting marshy as you get closer to the Atlantic coast. The Vendée is famous for its salt. Salt pans border the roads, between a grid of narrow channels that help to guide the water, with grazing animals and water birds far outnumbering the signs of human life. It honestly looked a lot like the Somerset levels from the bus we took through the area. Similar weather too!

In this novel, young ethnologist David Mazon arrives in La Pierre-Saint-Christophe to spend a year studying what he hopes will prove to be the epitome of rural France. His plan is to interview 100 residents and between that and his own observations, come up with a thesis that will satisfy his professor back at university in Paris. He makes copious notes and little progress.

“Webcams are intensely unsatisfying… (Idea for an article: the sexuality of anthropologists while in the field. Discuss Malinowski’s dirty fantasies while under the mosquito net.)…I’m as isolated as Malinowski in the middle of the Pacific, since isolation simply means not being able to have what you want when you want it: whether civilization is two hours, two days or two months away makes little difference.”

David sets about meeting the locals, drinking in the village bar and obsessing over the sex he isn’t having. He’s pretentious and snobby but his sections of this novel made me laugh a lot. I really enjoyed getting to know the other characters through his skewed view of the world.

This novel has a nested doll structure (like Cloud Atlas). It opens with David’s field notes. Then there’s a third-person section, which flits between present day and historical stories about past lives of the village residents. At the centre of it all is a long passage about the titular banquet – a boozy, gourmet affair described in extreme detail. The gravediggers attending the feast give speeches and debate topics in their field, largely in old-fashioned rhyming couplets.

“ ‘Pizzlebeer, you’ve raised my dander. Your spineless words are naught but slander! ‘Tis you that needs a dose of formol! A pint, I think, no! A bowlful! That might verily bung up your blowhole! Do you realize how much we’d lose? That formol is not mere perfuse? Embalming’s how we earn our keep – ban formol and four boards are cheap!’…’Pouvreau, your words are hollowware. Mere churlish jibes and much hot air! You know in Europe formol’s banned – to safeguard and protect the land? We needs must make a great decision – sow fear now; we reap division.’ “

I will admit I found the reincarnation stories a bit tedious and even the gravediggers feast went on rather too long. The main reason I persevered through these sections was hope we would return to David’s field notes. It’s all very clever and evocative, playful with language (which must have been a formidable challenge for the translator). But I longed to get back to the more straightforward – and relatable – narrative and when I got there, I truly did enjoy the book again.

Perhaps I was after all in the wrong environment to be reading this. It’s not a beach or poolside read, nor even a windswept clifftop read. Right now, six weeks later, wrapped up in warm clothes and a blanket on a stormy late-autumn day, I’m dipping into this book and thoroughly enjoying its leisurely pace and absurd grandiosity.

Le Banquet annuel de la Confrerie des fossoyeurs published 2020 by Actes Sud.
This translation published 2023 by Fitzcarraldo Editions.

Source: Amazon