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lost contact. Ironically, it is only at the end of the journey that the narrator gets to behold Morro Bay. The narrative of his American journey is interspersed with recollections of his lost family and his attempts to define his relationships with the mother he loved and pitied, the father he resented and distrusted, and the brother who fascinated and perplexed him. It is interesting to follow along this open-ended travel journal and observe the reactions of the young French people, who have never left home before, to the character types and social mores of the contemporary American West. One is reminded of Simone de Beauvoir’ L’Amérique au jour le jour and many other texts written by French travelers to these shores. For Blondel’s hero it is also a voyage of self-discovery. Like classical literary heroes, the young man recounting his story is making a quest in pursuit of his own identity. He is constantly asking himself what, if anything, he can do with his life. It is his original intention to remain in America and create a new life here. In the end, however, he decides to complete his Bildungsroman by returning to France with his friends and carrying out his duties as a responsible member of society. He will give his life meaning by becoming a writer. He will bestow immortality on the people he has known not only in his memory but in his books. As he puts it, in a metaphor reminiscent of Rimbaud’s sonnet “Voyelles,” he has emerged from the grey gloom in which he has been plunged and is bringing color back into his life. University of Denver (CO) James P. Gilroy CHOPLIN, ANTOINE. Le héron de Guernica. Paris: Rouergue, 2011. ISBN 978-2-82160249 -1. Pp. 160. 16 a. In April 1937, the Germans bombed Guernica, Spain, the cultural capital of the Basque people. Although Franco and his Nationalist supporters denied any involvement, it soon became clear that the attacks on Guernica were not only a means for testing new Nazi military tactic-bombings of civilian populations, but were more importantly the best method for demoralizing the enemy, in this case the Basque “Republican” resistance to Franco’s “Nationalist” forces. News of the Guernica bombings, including graphic black-and-white photographs, soon reached Paris. Millions of protestors filled the streets and formed one of the largest May Day demonstrations in the history of the city. At this time, Pablo Picasso was in Paris, struggling to find inspiration for a mural commissioned for the Spanish Pavilion at the 1937 World’s Fair in Paris. Stunned by the demonstrations and the eyewitness accounts published in the Parisian newspapers, Picasso began work on the mural he would call Guernica. Choplin’s novel sheds new light on the tenuous times in France and Spain before the German Occupation of France. Choplin has created a touching story of the young Basilio, a sensitive and innocent self-taught artist who loves to spend time in the marshes of Guernica painting herons. As readers, we are immediately drawn into Basilio’s world. Aware of the conflict between the Republicans and the Nationalists but rejected by the Republican army, Basilio leads a quiet life, taking care of his invalid uncle Augusto and trying to secure the attention of the pretty Celestina. It is during the bombings of Guernica that the local parish priest, Father Eusebio, asks Basilio to take photographs of the bombings to serve as testimony of the horrific events. Yet it is after the bombings that Basilio is able Reviews 597 to truly capture the trauma and emotions of what has happened in Guernica in his painting of a wounded heron. Convinced by Father Eusebio, Basilio then travels to Paris to show his painting to Picasso. Le héron de Guernica opens with Basilio’s arrival in Paris and follows him as he makes his way from the Luxembourg gardens to Trocadéro where the Spanish Pavilion is located. There, a kindly gallery guide offers him a free ticket to the exhibit and the opportunity to meet Picasso. While he waits for the exhibit to open, the story flashes back to the...

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