“Un uomo una donna e un bambino”, poi, credo che sia un romanzo ancora più profondo e complesso (nelle dinamiche e nelle tematiche trattate, al di là dello stile, appunto), rispetto al più noto “Love story”. Può essere un valore, un pregio, ed è questo che diventa nelle storie di Segal. E invece anche la semplicità può essere ricca di spessore e di sfumature. E che lo contraddistingue da quelli di oggi, i quali (non tutti, chiaramente) nei loro romanzi super-letti e super-venduti, scrivono in maniera altrettanto semplice ma dietro questa semplicità c’è la banalità, il nulla. Nei romanzi di Erich Segal, nonostante la prosa colloquiale e lo stile scorrevole, c’è quella profondità, nelle tematiche, nei profili dei personaggi, nelle riflessioni che ne scaturiscono, che a mio avviso costituisce il pregio dei grandi scrittori di ieri. And, I realized, I was doing the same, because the page was all wet!! When the boarding gate closes behind Jean-Claude, Robert manages to smile again, in the midst of his tears. Then, it’s Jean-Claude who shows him the light to his foggy eyes, and lifts his weight. The part that wrenched my heart is where Robert is driving Jean-Claude to the airport, and is trying his best to act tough with his feelings, but finally gives in. It pushes Robert to reconsider his relation with his family seriously, and his stagnated life, but the same incident also brings the best out his wife’s heart, and she falls for Jean-Claude as her own son.īut Jean-Claude wants to keep his mother’s wish: to go to a school in France his mother always wanted. Robert’s feeling for his illicit son is tested to its limits when Jean-Claude falls sick and nearly perishes.

Through discretion and devotion, he manages to win the heart of his father’s family, even reconcile his father from his estranged wife over the exposition of this illicit affair, and gains a position of ‘leader‘ among his father’s children, by managing to pacify that hooligan on the football field by non-violent means. He is still a child, but he knows his place in his father’s life, and does everything he can not to perturb his family, yet seeks out the natural parental protection after his mother dies. In this book, it’s neither the man, nor the woman, but the child Jean-Claude who grabbed me the most, by his robustness and resilience, and by his dignity.Īfter his mother’s accidental death in France, Jean-Claude arrives in Boston, to meet his biological father Robert Beckwith, who has his own happy family, but met Jean-Claude’s mother on an academic trip to Montpellier in France.

Oliver's story by erich segal