One realises the value of siblings only when one is a single child and loneliness haunts throughout life. The bantering of brothers and sisters, recalling their childhood abandon and nostalgic recollection and affinity are cause célèbre. The theme of the emotionally charged and poignant novel is the sneaking out of the siblings from a family relative's wedding and joining the youngest brother for a few hours. The story focuses on events of a day, and is simple and the short-lived tender reunion of the brothers and sisters and the parting from a few hours of revelry to drudgery and everlasting problems of routine life. The novel makes the reader wish that the reunion lasted longer. But characters and people have to grow in their own worlds.
Conversations
The protagonist and the petulant narrator is Garance, in her early thirties and acting like a spoiled child. The novel begins with her elder and laid back brother, Simon, a physicist, picking her up for a drive to the wedding of a cousin Hubert. Simon's wife Carine, a pharmacist, is with them and she is portrayed as hypercritical and pedantic. Garance complains about her as being obnoxious and difficult to get along. Both of them hurl back a torrent of insults at each other from the back and front seats of the car. Simon makes a detour to pick up Garance's older sister Lola, whose marriage is on the verge of divorce.
Plot unfolds
From the wedding hall the three siblings plot the French Leave (literally unauthorized absence) abandoning Carine and leaving a note for her on the back of a beer coaster! They also return to leave Carin's bag on the car of a friend. The three make a stealthy escape and drive through the French countryside looking for the youngest sibling Vincent.
Vincent lives as a tourist guide at the family's ancient run down chateau, “waiting to start a family and restore the moats”. For him the visit of his brother and sisters is unexpected (“Not making a big deal of seeing us there, but really happy all the same” p. 72) and he receives them in typical spoilt-child manner, making them wait till he disposes the last tourist and locks up the château. They spend the afternoon together recounting their childhood magic, lacking when they grew up and drifted. They are drawn into their own little cocoon and treat the outside world with disdain. They all have a real great time recalling their childhood and behaving like carefree kids. They rediscover the comfort and magic of a reunion.
They indirectly blame their parents for the drift. Parents, they admit, taught them about music and books, forced them to see things in a different light, and to aim higher and farther. But they forgot to give confidence because they thought it would come naturally. The four attend a local wedding and go to partying; one of Vincent's helpers, Nono asks whether the sisters are “still virgins”, because their behaviour indicated immaturity and childishness. At the end of the novel, Simon makes a revelation that Carine is “much nicer at home. It is when you guys are around that she is a pain. She thinks I love you more than her… she encourages me, motivates me, she forces me to do things… (p.104 – 105). That sums up Carine's character and puts her in perspective and brings out the intensity of sublime sibling love.
Though deceptively simple, French Leave is an enchanting story about nostalgia and the indescribable bonds of brother and sisterhood. The narrative is sharp, at times witty and lively. The characters and theme evoke the right kind of empathy in the reader. It takes the reader through a detour into the world of sibling affection and closeness of familial happiness and of growing up with a note of melancholy. It is also an exploration into the intensity and constriction of family relations.
