My Mother's Castle

My Mother's Castle

Author	Marcel Pagnol
Original title	Le Château de ma mère
Translator	Rita Barisse
Country	France
Language	French
Series	Souvenirs d'enfance
Genre	Autobiographical novel
Publisher	Pastorelly
Publication date	1957

My Mother's Castle (French: Le Château de ma mère) is a 1957 autobiographical novel by Marcel Pagnol, the second in the four-volume series Souvenirs d'enfance and the sequel to My Father's Glory. It was the subject of a film made by Yves Robert in 1990 which is faithful to the original plot but which includes material from the third book in the four-novel series, Le Temps des Secrets.

The book begins during Marcel's summer holiday. He describes his almost daily hunting trips with his father Joseph and his uncle Jules, and his growing friendship with a country boy named Lili. On the night before he is to return to the city to begin school, he plans to run away with the help of Lili. He leaves a note for his family saying goodbye and climbs through the window. As the night goes on, Marcel begins to grow scared, even seeing a ghost and changes his mind and returns before he is discovered (although it implied that his father had discovered the letter through a few jokes he makes). When he returns to the city, he is under extreme scholarly pressure due to his candidacy for a prestigious scholarship. He longs to return to the countryside and his wish is granted when they return for the Christmas holiday, much to Marcel's delight. Although only a few kilometers outside Marseilles the journey to the holiday home is time consuming as public transport takes them a short portion of the way and the rest is a walk along an 8 km, winding road carrying all their possessions.

After the Christmas holiday, the family expresses desire to return more often to the countryside, but Joseph does not see the logic in leaving the city on a Saturday to get to the countryside in the late afternoon or evening and then return on Sunday. Later Marcel's mother takes it upon herself to befriend the headmistress and convinces her to give Joseph's Monday morning duties to another teacher, allowing the family to stay at the villa until Monday morning. Soon they begin to go almost every weekend.

One day, when travelling to their house, the family encounters one of Marcel's father's former pupils, Bouzigue, who now works in maintaining a canal which runs from the hills into Marseilles. The canal runs across private estates and so he is issued with a key which allows him to pass through several locked doors along the towpath. The employee points out to the family that this is a shortcut which will allow them to reach their house in a fraction of the journey time and offers them his spare key. Marcel's father, being honest and upright realizes that this would amount to trespassing, but while passing through the canals, Joseph is able to spot construction issues that Bouzigue himself did not. He is then convinced, by Bouzigue and himself, that he would even be doing a service to the people. He nevertheless accepts the key.