Le pont de la rivière Kwaï - Pierre Boulle

I had no idea that The Bridge Over the River Kwai was a novel before it got made into a movie, let alone a French novel. I don’t recall where I stumbled upon this information, but it encouraged me to get a copy from the library.

It’s a quick read (though in my case it would’ve been quicker in English), brief in focus, without a lot of narrative expansion. The story begins with a group of English POWs led by Lt. Colonel Nicholson, a man of profound resolve and and unbending yet warped sense of duty. He and his men are made to build a bridge over the eponymous River Kwai, and his resolve is tested early when his overseer, Colonel Saito, tries to force the officers to conduct manual labour. He refuses, and the resulting battle of wills ends when he is allowed supervisory duty. It is a duty he takes seriously, and the construction of the bridge becomes a symbol of his pride and sense of superiority over his captors.

The narrative shifts halfway through to a group of three English special operatives, who are tasked to destroy the very bridge Colonel Nicholson is building. The story climaxes with a scene where Nicholson must choose his allegiance between his country and his bridge.

The pacing was tight, with interesting descriptions of the process of construction and sabotage that provide a clear view without getting bogged down in detail. I find it difficult to gauge the quality of French prose, but the style seemed good, with moments of introspection offered in between the more clinical description of the action. A good book overall.

Foundation and Empire - Isaac Asimov

Second in the Foundation series, Foundation and Empire feels more like a discrete story than the original, which was comprised of numerous shorter works stitched into a larger narrative. Empire is still not a single story, however, but two. The first story, speaking most directly to the book's title, concerns the last gasp of the first Galactic Empire as an ambitious general sets his sights on Terminus, the home planet of the first foundation. The story plays out much like those from the original book, where a wise and level-headed protagonist shepherds through the successful unfolding of Seldon's plan.

It is the second and longer story of the book, The Mule, where things get more interesting, for it is here where the Seldon prophecy appears, finally, to break down. The cause of this breakdown is the eponymous Mule, an enigmatic warlord with mutant powers to great and specific to be detected by the broader sweep of Seldon's psycho psychohistory. The story thus plays out more like a mystery, as hidden forces pull at the husband and wife protagonists, dragging them into the maelstrom of galactic conquest and goading them to seek Foundation's salvation from its would-be conqueror.

The prose remains vintage Asimov, though feels a bit more refined than that of the first book, perhaps because the stories themselves were more comprehensively planned. As always, it’s the ideas themselves that sparkle, the words and characters serving mainly as vessels.

The Cloven Viscount - Italo Calvino

The Cloven Viscount is the first book in a trilogy called Our Ancestors. I read the second book, The Baron in the Trees, already, but the sequence of books doesn't seem especially important, as there is no connection between them in terms of plot or characters. Instead, the link between them is thematic, as each is set in a period of Italy's past and uses fantasy to explore the society found in that time.

In the Cloven Viscount, the eponymous nobleman Medardo of Terralba is cut in half by a cannonball. His two sides both live, with his right side encompassing all of the Viscount's evil, and the left side all of his good. Medardo's nephew narrates the story, but he remains so firmly in the background that you often forget he is a character.

The story reads as a parable, eschewing realism in favor of archetypes. The characters aren't psychologically complex, but the structure of the story is such that this feels like a deliberate choice and not a weakness. It reads a little like a fairy tale, in that the characters aren't meant to be seen as actual people, but rather as instruments to get at some deeper truth embedded in the story itself. The writing likewise reflects this approach, it simple eloquence belying its poetic richness and depth.

I adored The Baron in the Trees, and though Viscount didn't grip me with quite the same intensity, it was still excellent and encourages me to read the final book in the trilogy.