La Grande Escapade is set in the narrator’s childhood – a territory that Jean-Philippe Blondel had refused to explore in his novels until now.

The 1970s, the provinces, the orange-brick Denis Diderot Elementary School, the town park, and a vacant lot. And most of all, the teachers and their families who lived on the school grounds. Back then, teachers, who still saw themselves as conduits towards knowledge, could be housed in the school building. But the period is a pivotal one: the first alerts about the environment are starting to be expressed; a new right-wing president has promised to change society… and then appoints the un-hip Raymond Barre as Prime Minister; women are raising their heads; public schools are going co-ed.

There are several families: the Coudriers, the Gouberts, the Lorrains, and the Ferrants; there’s Francine, Geneviève, Marie-Dominique and Janick. There is love, heartbreak, and betrayal. Fits of laughter and powerful emotions. All of the characters are wonderfully real and three-dimensional. You’re totally drawn into both the setting and the atmosphere. Page after page, Jean-Philippe Blondel escorts readers around, giving them an up-close and personal glimpse at a world that has disappeared.

The lives of the teachers and their families who live on the grounds of a provincial school in the 1970s. A tragicomic evocation of an era: pure Blondel.