Great Fear on the Mountain by Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz

Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz was a Swiss author, much lauded during his time, appearing on the (now defunct) 200 Swiss franc note. He wrote in (and I imagine spoke) French. 

***Again, I am still playing catch-up with write-ups, and so this novel is not as fresh in my mind as I would like, especially as it didn't really click with me or leave a particularly distinct impression***

Great Fear is kind of a horror story, but really, it is a meditation on the futility of man trying to conquer nature. It follows a small village, high in the Alps, as they decide to send cattle up to a pasture high in a pass - and we all know what happened last time they did that... (Well, the villagers mostly know what happened, but the young ones, in their folly, put it down to superstition and exaggeration. We find out what happened slowly as the novel unfolds.)

My quibbles with the novel are two-fold. Firstly, the pace. Like an old Simmental cow, who knows her route well and is in no hurry to get anywhere, it is unvaryingly slow and ponderous; there is no change to the plodding pace, even when the darkness of the mountain begins to envelope those who have been foolhardy enough to cross her.

Secondly, we never seem to get a personal point of view from any of the villagers. The head-hopping goes only to surface level, which makes it difficult to have any form of emotional involvement - we watch things unfold, but don't (or at least I didn't) feel them.

Despite these points, Great Fear is by no means a bad novel, it is an interesting idea, a kind of cosmic horror as ecological statement. And the Swiss countryside is invoked without either the cloying sentimentality or cynical disparagement which a lot of novels fall into.

Overall a slow and steady ★★★☆☆.

 

It greatly annoyed me that a Swiss flag of the
correct proportions (ie square) was more
expensive than this 5x3 version, even though it use
less fabric.