Jean de Florette (1963)

Summary

In the village of Bastides Blanches, people hate those from Crespin. This is why when Jean Cadoret, the Hunchback, settles in the farm, of the Romarins, he is not told about the hidden spring. This facilitates the maneuvers of the Soubeyran, the Papet and his nephew Ugolin, who want to buy back his domain at a low price…

Jean de Florette (1962), the first key volume of L’Eau des collines (Water from the Hills), marks, thirty years after Pirouettes, Pagnol’s return to the novel. It is the epic of nourishing water without which nothing is possible.
Marcel Pagnol develops in it the story of Manon’s father, evoked in flashback in the film Manon des sources (1952). Dialogues are tasty, and prose is as clear as in Childhood Memories. As for Papet and Ugolin, both funny and terrifying, they are among Pagnol’s most complex creations.

“You understand, if they had drunk the water from the cistern, it’s certain that all three of them would have died, and that would have bothered me. It’s not a crime to have blocked the spring: it’s for the carnations. But if, because of that, there were deaths, well maybe afterwards we wouldn’t talk about it, but we would think about it.”