The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers’ Guild

The unruly latest from Prix Goncourt winner Énard (Compass) tells a zigzagging and fantastical story of modern life in the French countryside. David Mazon, a 30-year-old graduate student, has moved to a rural village in western France to research his thesis, an ethnography of agrarian life in contemporary times. He slowly ingratiates himself into the community, making friends with farmers and spending evenings at the village’s sole place of business, a bar and fishing-tackle shop. Yet unbeknownst to David, and to the community, the residents, man and beast alike, have all been reincarnated: a young boar was once a beloved priest, a serial killer is born over and over as a drain worm, and a butcher was formerly the horse that bore the king of the Franks in the year 507. Énard’s writing on history and culture is often moving and beautiful, but it can also be exhausting—he goes on at great length about the various eras previously inhabited by the characters. It’s a relief when the novel returns to David’s own microcosmic adventure, as Énard tactfully and charmingly describes the hapless and patronizing city boy’s conversion into someone capable of empathy. From this baggy monster emerges a satisfying portrait of one man’s contradictions. (Nov.)