Jean de Florette and Manon of the Springs: Two Novels

This story runs as inevitable Grecian tragedy building on the prideful ignorance of Jean, the main character. He does not know of the spring which was blocked and concealed by the neighbor who desires not only his land to grow chrysthanthemums upon, but one day when she blooms, his daughter Manon. With the conspiracy of friends, this covetous neighbor blocks the spring which would bring life and fertility to the farm. Jean tries everything including tragically dynamite to bring the waters to flow with abundant life. When all is too late we discover unknown family ties which would have made Jean not a rejected outsider intruding upon and rejected by this enclosed and impoverished mountain farming community but embraced as a lost son. The inevitable development and tragedy of these two films together is as stately as as horrifying as a trilogy of ancient Greek plays, as profound and as universal. Watch them carefully and rivers of understanding will wash you with renewed humanity.

Part Faulkner, part Russian novel, this is simply one of the best novels I've ever read!

I bought this book after I had seen the films. The stories are full of wonderful character- isations, and the writing is disarmingly concise. The details from the films are fleshed out, as is to be expected, and a whole little world comes to life. I enjoyed this book and these stories immensely. Highly recommended.

(The two novels read as one, the second simply taking up--with no exposition--where the first leaves off.) One of the best books I've read in the last decade. Simple, charming, and often very funny, but also poignant, moving, characterized by profound human understanding, generating surprising emotional power, and rising to the haunting grandeur of genuine tragedy. The sharp, insightful portrayals of the leading Provence peasant characters are unforgettably vivid and "right," thoroughly convincing, and the evocations of their lives and speech and the countryside through which they move could only have been written by a true countryman. A magnificent achievement and a great read. Don't miss this under-rated classic of modern French literature.