Following generations of a family from 1927 to 2010, This Strange Eventful History has the potential to be a family epic, but falls rather short in the execution for me. There are interesting concepts- alienation as a French Algerian, rootlessness when your home is gone and can’t be returned to, and yhe cyclical nature of family and relationships as parents die and ill health follows through the decades. Sequences of parental decline are moving, and there are interesting passages, but I did find myself skimreading sections to get to the next perspective. There’s some well-telegraphed family secrets which are unnecessarily confirmed at the end - it was apparent enough without the clunky epilogue.
Overall a sense of disappointment.

This is the family saga of the Cassars, as we follow their lives across many different countries between 1940-2010.
Each chapter is told by a family member, often recounting the same events but from their perspective.
The characters were brought to life by Claire Messud and I felt their joy and sadness as they navigated through the years.
A big surprise at the end, that I didn’t see coming, made me go back through the book to see if there were any clues!
With thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

A wonderful rendition of a fictional family history.
The story is based upon stories from her family and based in settings that her family have loved/endured, the perfect recipe for a master storyteller telling believable interesting tales.
This formula works exceptionally well. The book even includes the telling of one character telling his family story in a number of volumes written longhand (is that the book the reader reads we wonder).
Once again a brilliant tale from the author with settings not normally associated with stories, especially Algeria.
I loved it. Thanks to the author for a brilliant novel.
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

On a sweeping and masterfully written multigenerational story of a French-Algerian family, spanning from 1940 to 2010. I loved it and am grateful for the opportunity to read it early.

Although the saga is inspired by the stories of Claire Messud’s own family, the book is really a work of fiction on the Cassar family, across seven decades and covering their journeys as pieds-noirs displaced by Algerian independence, moving across the world. You read about their stories in Algeria, Greece (Salonica, now Thessaloniki), the US, Cuba, Canada, Argentina, Australia and France, against the backdrop of history at the time.

The book begins with the story of Gaston, who is stationed in Greece as Paris falls to the Nazis during World War II, and his story with his dear wife Lucienne, as well as how Lucienne flees back to Algeria their two children Françoise and Denise. It’s interesting to read about their sense of belonging to Algeria whilst feeling thoroughly French. So much complexity when it comes to identity.

There are then the stories of Françoise and his Canadian wife Barbara, and I particularly enjoyed reading about the union of a very culturally different couple. They have two children, Loulou and Chloe, and the book also gives a specific focus on the story of Chloe, who is grappling with her her own sense of rootlessness, and how she looks into her family stories.

“This strange eventful history that made a life. Not good or bad— rather, both good and bad—but that was not the point. Above all, they had been, for so long, wildly curious. Just to see, to experience all that they could, to set foot anywhere, to speak to anyone, taste anything, to learn, to know.”

Stunning.

Messud has crafted a peripatetic novel based on her family history that stretches over most of the twentieth century. Her prose is elegant but this didn't completely work as fiction for me and I think I might have preferred the material as memoir.

There's a clear comparison to be made with [author:Leïla Slimani|8555975]'s ongoing fictionalising of her family history set in Morocco ([book:Le pays des autres|50819580]) as opposed to Messud's Algeria but their writerly strategies are quite different: Slimani keeps her work tight, focusing closely on a few characters so that we get to know them intimately; Messud does the opposite - she takes a far more scattershot approach jumping between focalised characters, places and times over a century from 1927 to 2010. The result for me was too distancing. It's a shame as the two openings are engrossing: a first person narrative from a descendant in 2010, and a third person story of her grandparents facing separation due to WW2. But after that, as we sweep through time in jumps of about a decade, I lost the connection to the story.

There are indications that this wants to be about, in part, the results of French colonialism in Algeria but the topic feels underweighted. It's not just big political movements like independence which are lost in the sweep but there's some confusion about the status of the Cassars and whether they have Algerian antecedents or are completely French. This is important because the framing device is that one of the factors behind the family's sense of homelessness springs from their colonial rootlessness: 'and the cost of their forefathers' sins, will be for them and their children to be cast from that illusory paradise, to wander the earth, belonging nowhere.'

In the end, I think I wanted a book that is more intimate like the opening of this one - once we jumped forward to the first ten year gap and a whole host of new characters appeared, I couldn't help feeling a bit short-changed. But that's a mismatch between me and the book: readers wanting a more sweeping history of a family's burgeoning generations through the twentieth century may well love this.

The novel is set around many locations in the world as a family tries to find its way back to each other. Retold over many decades, 1910 - 2010, we follow the family through heartache and tears, love and disappointment, through travel and settling into other landscapes. Emerse yourself in the brutal telling of the authors, Claire Messud, novel for it reflects some of her own life experiences. What are our experiences for if not to recall , retell, or write within such a masterpiece as this. They make the novel rich and compelling. Yes, there are areas that need resolve to read through, but don't let that detract or take away from this beautifully accomplished work. I thoroughly recommend this book. This Strange Eventful History is my first read of Claire Messud's work, and I will most certainly look for other works by this much talented author.
My thanks go to NetGalley and especially to the publishers Little Brown for my advance copy for my honest review.

An engrossing densely written read with a genuinely surprising twist in the final pages. This is a book to lose yourself in and savour.

Having read a book by this author before and enjoyed it I was intrigued to read another. A piece of historical fiction which so had so much promise based on the author’s stories from her own family but I only read half of it. Kind of book I usually love to get immersed in, historical, cultural and travelling the globe, however I just lost interest in the characters. A father based in Salonica says farewell to his family and sends them to the safety of his homeland in Algeria.

Thanks to Netgalley, the author and publishers for an ARC in return for an honest review.

Strangely uneventful

This is such promising material but it seems to consist of one character explaining what's happened, then handing over to another character who explains the same thing, slightly differently. DNF

It took me some time to properly embed myself in this novel. It is a slow burn, a story of family, independence, war, dispossession, colonialism, post-colonialism, separation and the ties that bind.

The novel largely covers the twentieth century within a French Algerian family. The first generation, born in poverty, roams the globe which only proliferates through the generations with long sojourns in France, Middle-East, Argentina, Canada, USA, Australia and England. Whilst the deep roots at the heart of the story lie deeply in Algeria it seemed to me that for different reasons they were torn apart, leaving only fragments as world events, escapes and opportunities were forged.

I recently have read the first two published volumes of Leila Slimani's Moroccan trilogy which fictionalises (as does this book) her family story. Both Morocco and Algeria were considered departements of France until independence, after which the "French" population was left homeless. Each deal with their narratives differently.

Messud writes her story in one volume which moves between generations and time slots. Because of the global scale and points of view this gives a rather clunky, peripatetic immersive step into one life before the reader is required to change gear and re-calibrate for the next section. Slimani moves in a more linear way with the rising generation taking the lead in each book.

This is a challenging book yet one that grew on me. I found many sections overly complicated with superfluous detail. Whilst I accept that building a realistic picture needs substance, this was over-egged, in my opinion and the story lacked traction in these large sections. The long view on colonialism however was hugely rewarding. Is the reason, asks our Algerian grandfather, that the US and Australia are not taken to task as vehemently as European colonialists, because they largely decimated the first inhabitants, not attempting any level of sharing a society or integrating?

I think this novel will toss around my head for some time

With thanks to NetGalley and Little, Brown UK for allowing me to read and review