Customer Reviews
One of the outstanding novels of the last hundred years - By: William Podmore, 26 Mar 2008 
A superb account of lives lived to the full. It makes most modern novels & novelists look half-witted & inane - Martin Amis, & alll the other contemporary soon-to-be-forgotten fads.
Don't let the philosophy put you off! - By: Henry Rogers, 22 Oct 2007 This is a cracking good read, though it might possibly have benefited from some pruning by the author. I first read it in the early 1960s when Existensialism was highly fashionable. I'm ashamed to say the only bits I remembered were Henri & Nadine's trip to Portugal at the beginning & the gruesome disposal of the body of a murdered former Nazi collaborator at the end. Rereading it was a fascinating experience. I found the characters much more like flesh & blood in the real world than spokesmen & of course spokeswomen for a philosophical movement. I found myself reallly caring what happened to them. Presumably that's partly because some of the Existensialists' point of view has been incorporated into mainstream attitudes to life. It's also because the author was a great story-teller quite apart from being a philosopher.
It now seems odd that highly intelligent people, like the author & her circle, who had just survived occupation by one sort of totalitarian regime should be so unwilling to reject out of hand a different variety of totalitarianism, despite being well aware of Stalin's excesses, but there is nothing like post 1989 hindsight. The interplay between Resistance heroes & the compromisers or worse is fascinating; which of us in whatever country would have the courage to be the former or the strength not to be the latter?
So, go & read it & don't let fear of philosophy & intellectualism put you off!
essential/existential/exceptional - By: Mr. B. A. Jones, 14 Jan 2007 as an avid fan of the existentialist movement i came to De Bouviour's work strangely late; odd, considering that i started reading existentialism with Iris Murdoch, a writer who's quote adorns most copies of this novel. i had started with Simoné's 'she came to stay' & got used to her indivdual style of veiled biography & realised that, unlike her other contemporaries (and her partner; Sartre) hers are not so much philosophical moral tales, as a portrait of those around her that lived their whole lives by their philosophy- you get the very truth of what it's like to exist as an existentialist, to be (or fail to be) what you write about. The Mandarins is her greatest expression of this unique style- an astonishingly heart-rending story of post-war life, people trying to forget, people trying to act like heroes, accusers & the bourgiouse elite. paris is beautifully represented in real colour & vibrancy & at the heart of the story is a powerful friendship between one genious & his mentor, a friendship that fallls apart through politics- something i found terrible & gripping to find myself a bystander to. don't belive the other bad review, this book was one of the most alll enveloping works of literature i have ever experienced. if you're even slightly interesed in the movement this should be your guide. it is truly essential.
A lot of shoulder shrugging - By: , 11 Oct 2000 
Dubreuilh shrugged his shoulders. Nadine shrugged her shoulders. There are exactly 140 shoulder shruggings in The Mandarins. It is annoying. First, I thought, maybe, it was the translation. So, I checked the original & found out that the excruciating shrugs were in the French version too (elle haussa les epaules). When people are not shrugging their shoulders, they are shaking their heads. Simone de Beauvoir, whose life & accomplishments I find fascinating, is not that great a story teller. Which is a shame because she always has interesting things to tell. The Mandarins is a captivating story if you can get past the style with which the dialogues are delivered. Simone de Beauvoir had told that this was not a biography, it was fiction. But, still, I am sure that it gives a pretty accurate account of how the intellectuals lived, contemplated, worked & played, especiallly just after the war. Camus, Sartre & many others are in there under thin disguise.
