Livre étrange, où les protagonistes sont deux petites filles qui ont des pouvoirs magiques parce que, pour diverses raisons, liées avec les elfes. Une guerre, un piano et beaucoup d'animaux magiques. Ce ne fut pas ce que je pensais, mais il est pas mal.

Strano libro questo, che vede come protagoniste due bambine che hanno poteri magici perché, a vario titolo, imparentate con gli elfi. Una guerra, un pianoforte e tanti animali magici. Non era quello che mi aspettavo, ma non é male.

Strange book, where the protagonists are two little girls who have magical powers because, for various reasons, unrelated with the elves. A war, a piano and many magical animals. It was not what I expected from Muriel Barbery, but it's not bad.

THANKS TO NETGALLEY AND GALLIC BOOK FOR THE PREVIEW!

Beautiful, ethereal read. Once again Muriel Barbery enchants the reader. Highly recommended.

Such an unusual novel: a mystical, poetic, metaphysical, allegorical fairy tale of delightful language and entrancing imagery. A joy to read.

Pros

Great descriptions Strangely reminded me of the Night Circus

Cons

Found it hard to follow the plot Couldn’t really connect with the characters Couldn’t work out the time period Really long sentences Use of present tense Speech sometimes feel out of place Makes comments that take you out of the story

Despite the long cons list I actually quite enjoyed the story. The plot itself was a bit slow and oddly hard to follow at times – no idea why, not that much actually happens- but it kind of reminds me of the Night Circus, which I adore. Both don’t have particularly brilliant plots but there is some great descriptions and the use of magic is both imaginative and beautiful.

“There had been a frost at dawn, and it sparkled from one end of the land to the other; then the sun came up, all of a sudden, above an earth now covered with a cloth that glistened like a sea of light.”

I loved most of the descriptions of nature in the book, which is funny since it’s what I hated about Tess of the D’Urbervilles. The book is as much about the arts – painting, music, and storytelling – and nature as it is about magic, in fact I’d almost say the magic is secondary to everything.

Since I do have such a long cons list I should talk about them.

I found it hard to connect with any of the characters. They didn’t feel real. The two girls were just too perfect, they didn’t do anything wrong and they were almost ethereal. The people of the villages were similar. They didn’t seem to do anything wrong, they started having slight doubts at one point about Maria but that felt like it was because of magic rather than anything and it only lasted a moment. They never hunted too much when everything was in abundance, they didn’t get too upset when their houses were destroyed and they more or less except death calmly and without fuss. It’s not how people react, is it?

Speaking of the characters, part of the reason I couldn’t follow the plot is because I kept mixing up the characters. They didn’t feel distinct from each other and maybe there was too many of them. There is a character list at the beginning but I found it distracting having to go back to the beginning to check who was who. It’s not helped that they – Maria and those around her – aren’t named for a really long time, just their family relation like father or aunt. It’s really confusing because there is a lot of them and they act really similar. Hell I keep mixing Clara and Maria up. If I hadn’t had a look at the synopsis I would have put that Clara was the one in France.

I also couldn’t get a feel for when the book is set. I don’t think any dates are mentioned or specific people are mentioned. They do mention a war – mostly in France – but not which war. I does feel reasonably recent, maybe the last 150 years at the most. No electricity is mentioned, but I’ve been to lots of isolated villages in Greece which sound very similar to the places in the book. Rome is visited but how its written doesn’t give much of a time period either. I think... I’d almost forgotten it... there are guns, or rifles used in France but the ones with crossbows in that group were more effective than the rifles. It was just strange but not really that important.

All my other issues with the book were really minor. Most of sentences were really long, sometimes the length of paragraphs. Direct speech felt out of place at times, especially at the beginning, as there was so little of it. Personally I don’t like the use of present tense, in any books, and I hate when you’re brought out of the story with things like: “I would not be surprised if, in the end, we find out that we are all the characters of some meticulous but mad novelist” or “Which has been demonstrated by modern medicine”. It brings you out of the story and reminds you that it is that... a story, and I like to be ignorant of that.

None of these of these things are that important. I enjoyed reading the book, even if it was for the descriptions more than anything and would recommend it for that alone.

Firstly I would like to thank Net galley and Gallic books for the opportunity to read and review this book. This is the first book that I have read that’s been translated into English and it is well translated. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to finish this book, I found the book interesting but was having to force myself to read it. It is about two little girls, one called Clara who just appear I small villages as babies. The first little girl arrived in a snow storm, we learn about her as she grows up and then she disappears in anther snow storm. The village go out in search of her.
Clara arrives in an Italian village and has an uncanny talent on the piano; she can read a piece of music once and be able to play it. She also has an emotional almost magical connection to the music, she is sent to Rome in order to be tutored by a music master. This book has both religious and magical elements to it. There seems to be almost a war between the two. The book is very poetical and descriptive with a nice use of metaphors. It includes some quite complex descriptions of mythical creatures.

The prose in this was incredibly dense and I found myself skipping passages in the search for some white space. It was beautifully written, of course, but the story, for me, felt bogged down under the weight of description.

Thanks to Netgalley for the arc to review.

This is a fanciful, gentle book. At times it is enchanting too which is not an easy result to achieve. Significant congratulations should go to the author who maintains the book's gentle feeling. There is no compelling storyline. It is essentially descriptive. A delicate read for a summer.'s day.

A beautifully written fantasy.

Two little girls; one living in Spain and being brought up in a huge family, the other a musical genius, being brought up by Father Centi in Italy. How can they possibly have anything to do with elven councils and saving the world? Everything!

Muriel Barbery has crafted the most beautiful book filled with magic and charm. Her use of words to form a vivid picture for us to follow is mesmerising and leaves us wrapped in a warm blanket of colours, people and exciting new experiences.

I first came across Muriel Barbery thanks to “The Elegance of The Hedgehog” -and started this book with trepidation, thinking that it could never outshine its predecessor, but it has! I love fairy stories and elves with two little girls saving the world has made me once again believe that they really do exist.

Such a satisfying read filled with so much beauty.

Treebeard

Breakaway Reviewers received a copy of the book to review.

I live in a a countryside, in Italy, and so when I picked up this book, The Life of Elves from Gallic Books I knew what I would have met and I haven't been disappointed. The book is translated wonderfully well and the plot to me similar, although distant at the same time for style and purpose from the one written by Joanne Harris: Chocolat.

Yes because the arrival of two outsiders in these two remote portion of lands, Spain and Abruzzo, and in two countrysides very well "captured" by the author, changed the course of the events for these simple people and lands...

The description of the italian countryside is perfect.

These kids had two gifts, the one of the vision of the past the first one in Spain and the one of music, the second living in Italy.

It's an emotional and a magical trip of sensations in rural lands where people have a big heart and where people believes at the power of certain people and at the enchantment that they can bring with...themselves

Scenarios also big cities as Rome, where for example the musician teenager will discover all the eccentricities of her Maestro. I recognized in that treats the ones I met in old and so-called important people when I was little and their desire of telling who they were sharing their opinions about various topics .
I was enchanted by the writing-style of Barbey. I didn't read her first book and I decided I will do that as soon as possible. To me a privilege to read her second book thanks to Netgalley.com.

I recommend this book to all that spirits in search for something magical, abstract, different, to all that people in love for discovering rural places but at the same time at all that human being in love for magic.

First of all for those who loved "The Elegance of the Hedgehog": forget about that one when you start reading "The Life of Elves". They are 2 completely different books and genres. "The Life of Elves" is more a fantasy fairy tale, a bit in the style of Tolkien.

The story is descriptive (Barbery uses a lot of text to describing details) which is distracting from the plot. Sometimes she strays away from the story to, lengthy, describe the weather for instance. The story is not really set in a specific time period even though we get some hints which contradict them self. The main characters Clara and Maria, although they are opposites, do not show a lot of difference in character. All of these make the book a bit cloudy and hard to follow. On top of that there's a layer of spirituality which is just not my thing. This book is the first part of a series and that might explain the lack of certain details and background info.

However: the descriptive nature of this book is well written and the story itself poetical.

This Fantasy story has a very fairytale-like tone to the narration and starts rather abruptly, as if in the middle of the story, but the reader soon catches up and the situation becomes apparent. A foundling child, Clara, appears under mysterious circumstances and is adopted into a Christian home to have a normal human childhood, but something about her is very fairy-like.

Another child, Maria, who "talks like most people sing" is adopted in similarly strange circumstances in Italy. The connection between these little girls becomes apparent as the story unfolds.

There is very little dialogue, especially in the early chapters, but the story is told in an adult's version of the fairy-tale storytelling voice with a sort of dreamy quality. It is not an immersive read, yet it is entertaining enough to keep reading, despite sketchy description of what's going on. A lot of new characters are introduced through the story and their non-human nature is often inferred more than made clear.

There are digressions to tell background stories of various characters and sometimes it really is like following a dream, jumping from one sequence to another with only a tentative hold on the connections, but all is made clear by the end. I noted in the acknowledgements that it is translated from French, which explains some of this.

Overall a pleasant Fantasy read, but not one that will stimulate the emotions to a great extent.