This Strange Eventful History

By: Claire Messud

Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell

Length: 16 hrs and 33 mins

Publisher's summary

An immersive, masterful story of a family born on the wrong side of history, from one of our finest contemporary novelists.

Over seven decades, from 1940 to 2010, the pieds-noirs Cassars live in an itinerant state—separated in the chaos of World War II, running from a complicated colonial homeland, and, after Algerian independence, without a homeland at all. This Strange Eventful History, told with historical sweep, is above all a family story: of patriarch Gaston and his wife Lucienne, whose myth of perfect love sustains them and stifles their children; of François and Denise, devoted siblings connected by their family’s strangeness; of François’s union with Barbara, a woman so culturally different they can barely comprehend one another; of Chloe, the result of that union, who believes that telling these buried stories will bring them all peace.

Inspired in part by long-ago stories from her own family’s history, Claire Messud animates her characters’ rich interior lives amid the social and political upheaval of the recent past. As profoundly intimate as it is expansive, This Strange Eventful History is “a tour de force … one of those rare novels that a reader doesn’t merely read but lives through with the characters” (Yiyun Li).

“A choral mural of sweep and scope that knows just when to render the historical personal, Claire Messud’s epic is above all a wise, wary, yet love-struck chronicle of how the selves we strive to make become ‘colonized’ by family.”—Joshua Cohen, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Netanyahus

©2024 Claire Messud (P)2024 Recorded Books

Deep exploration of character; interesting historic backdrop

Engaging and well-connected story. I really enjoyed learning a little bit about the cultural groups and dynamics in Algeria and Greece particularly. Initially, my expectation was that there would have been more history —- that the events during WWII would have been more detailed. However, this is more about the characters and family dynamics as they relate to the cultures they are products of. Good read but was lacking something to totally engross and make it great.

Achingly beautiful

This generational tale runs slow and deep, and so it is to be read, savoring every sentence. There are multiple POV characters, each with their own aspect yet casting light on all the others, like facets of a diamond, and I particularly appreciate the complexity of their intertwining stories and their very human personalities. No one is flatly good or bad, no feeling is trite, no turn of the plot is predictable except, perhaps, death. The fictional family is based on the author's family, and Chloe -- the only character narrated in 1st person -- is clearly the author herself. She penetrates the minds of her elders with love, compassion, and nuance, and draws from their small but soaring lives a philosophy that feeds the reader's soul. I wept several times as I listened to it and could barely force myself to turn it off. The narrator captures the spirit of the book well. A luminous gem.

Be Prepared for a Jarring Narration

I had been looking forward to listening to this new book by Claire Messud, both for her reputation as a writer and for the subject matter. I purchased the audiobook on the day of publication. Cassandra Campbell has a lovely voice, and I enjoyed her reading of Where the Crawdads Sings. However. A big however. In this book, the characters are multinational, many of them multilingual, with complex personal histories in Beirut, Algiers, Salonica, Paris, Poland, and elsewhere. Understandably, this presents a challenge in voicing the different characters with regard to their accents. Unfortunately, Ms. Campbell, apparently with the assent of the recording's director, has opted for an unbelievably heavy approach, especially with the French accent for the central characters. The "zeess" and "zatt" for "this" and "that" are so thick you can cut them with a couteau - to the point of parody. This is apparent very early in the book with the two young French pied-noir children, a brother and sister, who are in exile in Algiers, and who speak to each other in such heavy French accents that you cannot avoid thinking of Loony Tunes' Pepe Le Pew. Such exaggerated accents are absurd for a brother and sister who would of course hear each other entirely without accent. A light touch to indicate character and native tongue would have been so welcome - a masterful example is David Pittu's narration of Fernando Aramburu's "Homeland", where the characters toggle between Spanish and Basque. Unfortunately, Ms. Campbell seems to treat this narration as an opportunity to demonstrate her prowess with various accents. This range would be amusing, even impressive, as an audition tape, but as the narration for a serious work of fiction, it is impossible to ignore the overkill, and has just about spoiled the book for me. I hope it does not for you, but I recommend listening to the sample before purchasing. I'm sorry to write such a negative review, but this could so easily have been avoided with a firmer hand from the production staff.

accents drove me nuts

I read great reviews for this book and was anxious to download it. I have two problems with it. First, the accents are a serious distraction, I've stopped the audio at times to get a break from them. Second the book is so darn earnest.

Riveting , Elegiac, perfectly Evocative

Beautiful in every way. The characters are deeply portrayed . The historical moments intensely, gently vivid .

Great performance, boring story

The plot is too ordinary and it jumps from character to character. Epic but ordinary family story

Naive and insipid narration

Breathy sophomoric reading

Probably best to read and not listen to this pitiable excuse for theater.

This was a very long time with characters I didn’t love.

It felt like a very long weekend with family members whose secrets had crippled them & weren’t very evolved.