A Parisian city mouse listens to a garrulous country mouth and
transcribes the philosophy he hears.Cueco is a writer and an artist
(take his word for the art; his book is presented sans
illustrations). He has a place somewhere in the countryside where
the garden is lovingly tended by a wise retired railwayman,
seemingly of a certain age. The writer acts as knowing and
sensitive interlocutor. His text is a record of the gardener's
yeomanly profundities-all founded on the most quotidian stuff.
There are reports of the man's journey to the rainy seaside and of
his bad teeth, of beautiful courgettes, pesky moles and manure. He
finds beauty in a cabbage.The gardener-one Frenchman who will not
drink wine-subsists, it appears, largely on kippers and soup. For
comic effect, on a visit to Paris he brings an anvil. (It's to
sharpen a scythe, he says, to further comic effect). His advice:
Always carry a piece of string in your pocket. And a knife. On
travel: The Algerian desert is "nothing but sand." A bit of folk
wisdom: "With a hat, you've got shade wherever you are." Theology:
"He was a good bloke, that Jesus." Getting bored yet? There's more
palaver about gravel, a new red scooter and whether socks are
comfortable inside the old man's muddy wellies. (The book,
translated from the French, contains British-isms like "buggers,"
"gobsmacking," "knackers.") The lackadaisical tone is eventually
offset a bit with reports of illnesses, a trip to spruce up some
gravesites and getting up close and personal with soil. Note,
students, there's some foreshadowing going on. The book finally
achieves an elegiac mode to conclude its transcript of banalities
that reach for depth without much success.Largely small talk in a
small book produces lighter reading than intended. (Kirkus Reviews)
Tales of life, death and lettuce in a French garden. Two men, both
advancing in years, converse deep in the French countryside. One is
an artist, the other his gardener. On finishing his work, the
gardener enters the studio and looks over the artist's shoulder. As
the artist draws, the gardener talks: about his youth, his family,
his travels, his health, and, of course, the pleasures of
gardening. Sometimes the artist responds, sometimes he just
listens; but, all the while the bond between these two very
different men is deepening. Their growing friendship produces many
moments of dry humour: when the gardener visits the artist in
Paris, he brings an anvil along in his luggage; the pair go to the
forest on a mission to steal a twenty- foot fir tree; they marvel
at the curious habits of local characters, and ponder whether a
modern-day Jesus would take a job on the railway. There are moments
of profundity, too, when the two friends reflect on their own
mortality, and the equally taxing question of whether a lettuce can
be as beautiful as a painting.
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