The other side of the mountain

This eerie and horrifying short novel was completed by Michel Bernanos, son of the distinguished French writer Georges Bernanos, shortly before Michel's tragic death in 1964. It begins as a straightforward adventure story and gradually becomes a haunting odyssey through underworlds of despair, drugs, and death. A young boy hires out a French galleon commissioned by the Spanish in pick up gold in Paris. He is befriended by the elderly cook and becomes his helper. After the ship has been becalmed for many days and the crew has gone berserk, a violent storm erupts and the ship sinks. The boy and his friend, the only survivors, regain consciousness convinced that they have passed into a different world. This becomes certain as the two arrive at a body of land highlighted by a chain of reddish volcanic mountains. All about them are lifelike statues of humans and animals, the faces fixed in a fellowship of fear. But there is no sign of human or animal life, only lush vegetation and much mineral activity. Everything is convinced by the sense blood-red light by the day and imbued with a life of its own by night. The travelers decide that their only chance of survival is to reach the highest mountaintop. Most readers will be held spellbound as they follow this fantastic adventure to its shattering climax. Some will be shocked by the author's bleak vision of man and the forces exerted upon him. Yet this despair is in some measure believed by the close camaraderie between the boy and the old man and by their quiet courage. In The Other Side of the Mountain Michel Bernanos perceptively and poignantly bespeaks an anguish and a solitude particular to our time.