cover image Cronus' Children

Cronus' Children

Yves Navarre. Calder Publications, $19.95 (319pp) ISBN 978-0-7145-4013-9

Elegant, thoughtful and deeply tragic, this Prix Goncourt winner plays infinite variations on the story of Cronus, the Titan overthrown by his son Zeus. Here Cronus is Henri Prouillan, 74 years old, father of Luc, Sebastien, Claire and Bertrand, and husband of Cecile. All in their several ways remain detached from yet trapped by this man who never dares love, because he can't risk attachment. The father's genes are so strong in the children that while loathing him, they nonetheless resemble him; for this reason, the wives of Luc and Sebastien leave, Claire's husband dies and Bertrand's lover commits suicide. Only Bertrand, on whose 40th birthday this chronicle and its flashbacks take place, dared confront his father, defying him and openly declaring his homosexuality. As a result, Bertrand spends his days between life and death, victim of a lobotomy forced upon him by a father who wants at any cost to protect the bourgeois values that have allowed him to grow rich and become a minister in the French government. Thus Cronus has killed his children by letting them live. The book is difficult to read, yet hard to put down, because the truth it seeks to reveal is bitter and undeniable and the emotions it lays bare are universal.(January 20)