Madelaine arrives as a child, starving and alone, to steal eggs from the villagers of Les Montées. Instead of casting her out, they adopt her as one of their own, swayed by her fiery spirit and beauty. Madelaine Before the Dawn, winner of the 2024 Prix Goncourt des Lycéens, is an incandescent novel of rebellion written in poetic prose by Sandrine Collette and translated from the French by Alison Anderson.
Collette vividly renders life in the village, where rain at the wrong moment means wrecked crops and a single cut can cause a devastating infection. Layer on feudal oppression and a lord's son who takes women as he pleases and kills on a whim, and the result is a devastating, gripping novel of struggle.
Madelaine learns to forage with her adopted siblings, taking up an axe as her tool of choice and becoming unusually adept with it. She inspires those around her as she refuses to bend even under the cruel realities of starvation and oppression: "We love Madelaine, she's a fire where we can warm our hands, a sun making our meadows fragrant." Disaster, however, is always waiting in the wings, set up in the first chapter like a Greek chorus promising tragedy. And within that tragedy something else hides. The story builds to a moment of rebellion and confrontation that will have readers celebrating through their tears.
Madelaine Before the Dawn is a gritty portrayal of the ruthlessness of village life and a lyrical treatise on what it means to fight even when there's desperately little hope of victory. --Carol Caley, writer