Títutulu Original: Prohibited games
Year of publication: 1952
Translation: Vanesa García Cazorla
Valoración: Advisable
Year 1940. France occupied. Rows of men, women and children roam the roads fleeing from the bombings. One of those girls is Paulette who, at 9 years, attends the death of his parents and is alone, completely alone.
Year 1940. France occupied. The Dollé live a few kilometers from one of those roads, work as mules and live apparently oblivious to war. One of the family members is Michel, also 9 years old and also only in an adult world.
So far and so close. Two separate realities that come into contact thanks to Paulette and Michel, two beings in a world of codes, gestures, rituals and incomprehensible symbols for them, two people who try to learn (he) ner them as they can.
This would be, in a very approximate way, the argument of the novel. But like any approach, one always leaves things outside and is convenient not to ignore them because they are a fundamental part of the text. Thus, it is necessary to indicate that the novel is built, in addition to what has already been indicated about children and adults, based on several opposite planes that oppose and increase the sensation of madeneity: the countryside and the city, the “public” and the domestic , men and women, the earthly and the celestial, etc. Without these counterpositions it will be impossible to understand the novel.
Already focusing on valuation aspects of Prohibited gamesseveral points to highlight:
- Children’s voices. Look that it is difficult to put literary voice to children and that it does not sound imposed. Boyer makes children speak and act as children, even in a very special context.
- The use of resources close to the story, which complement those children’s voices. The constant enumerations, the most innocent games, etc. serve as an example, etc.
- His obvious symbolism.
- His humor, which goes from innocent to the macabre, with some very very very French touches (why do we always talk about English humor and not of French humor, for example?)
- His critical character towards a completely dumped and dehumanized world.
As a less favorable aspect, I have a certain feeling of missing some of the novel’s materials. For example, a greater deepening in relations between members of the Dollé family or between these and their neighbors, the Ganard. Although that perhaps would be another novel and remove the focus of Michel and Paulette, from their traumas, from their poor lives.
Source: https://unlibroaldia.blogspot.com/2025/02/francois-boyer-juegos-prohibidos.html
