It focuses on 8-year-old Marcel’s idealization of his father, Joseph, a secular schoolteacher.
The first volume, My Father's Glory , introduces the reader to the Pagnol household in Marseille and their idyllic summer villa, B协作 (Bastide Neuve), located in the rugged hills of the Garlaban massif. Joseph Pagnol: The Secular Saint It focuses on 8-year-old Marcel’s idealization of his
A summary of the remaining volumes in the series, ( Le Temps des secrets ) and The Time of Love ( Le Temps des amours ). Over the course of the narrative, we watch
Joseph is a schoolteacher—rational, proud, and deeply ethical. To young Marcel, his father is a superhero, a man of unmatched knowledge and virtue. Over the course of the narrative
But the deeper current here is loss. Over the course of the narrative, we watch Marcel outgrow his mother. He begins to notice her fragility, her fears, her physical exhaustion. In one devastating passage, he realizes he is no longer a child who can run to her for everything. The book ends with the revelation that the family will no longer summer at La Treille. The paradise is closed. As Pagnol writes: “Thus ended the first part of my life. The rest was only a long and painful journey toward the lost paradise.”