L’École des Robinsons (Godfrey Morgan) by Jules Verne Review

I’ve been a fan of Jules Verne since my youth. My dad has a collection of several of his works in French. It’s nearly an entire shelf of matching little red hardcovers, about the same size as mass market paperbacks. I believe it’s the entire The Extraordinary Voyages series, but I’m not entirely sure. I read a few of them between the ages 10 to 12 and enjoyed them a bunch. I’ve reread a couple as an adult and I can confirm that 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea holds up. It’s one of only two Verne books in my personal collection. Itching to read another of his works I borrowed a couple of my dad’s books when I visited at Christmas. One of them is L’École des Robinsons (often titled Godfrey Morgan in English after the protagonist). As you can probably guess form the French title, it’s an island survival story in the same vein as Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. Having finished it recently, I can attest that some of Verne’s books are better suited for the audience of a 10 to 12 year old than to an adult.

L’École des Robinsons is a relatively short book. Godfrey Morgan, a young Californian, has lived a life of luxury thanks to his insanely wealthy uncle. Before marrying, he convinces his fiancé and his uncle to allow him 12 to 18 months to travel the world in order to supplement his theoretical education with some practical knowledge of the world. Shortly after leaving, the steamship he was on sinks in a storm and he finds himself stranded on an island with only another passenger, his dance and etiquette instructor, to keep him company and aid in his survival. The rest of the story is about how the two men survive on the deserted island. 

The book doesn’t work well for several reasons. The primary draw for me to this kind of island survival fiction is the survival aspect. What do the characters do and how do they do it. We get very little of that with Godfrey and Professor Tartelett. They don’t even figure out how to start a fire which is one of the most basic requirements for staying alive long term in this kind of situation. They don’t build much of anything, neither tools nor a shelter. The shelter they have is a very large hole located at the base of a sequoia tree which they simply had to clear of debris before moving in. They build a few things for their shelter later on after finding a conveniently place trunk full of supplies which included tools, clothing, weapons, and more. They’re literally given everything they need in order to make live on the island as easy as possible.

If your island castaway story isn’t going to focus on the what and how of staying alive, then perhaps you’ll focus on other things. First thought that comes to mind is character development of some sort or seeing how the difficulties of staying alive in a harsh environment affect your characters. The reason Godfrey set out on his voyages was to gain some firsthand knowledge of the world. That’s an easy in for Verne to develop his character. We get none of that. As for Tartelett all we get from his is a recurring complaint that he wants to go home.

There’s little in terms of challenges for our protagonist to overcome. The few difficulties he does face are easily taken care of, often by chance (they end up with fire due to lightning striking a tree). Even the island they are on seems to provide quite a bit of goods at little cost or hardship to the characters. There are no dangerous animals living on the island. No native population to deal with either. In terms of plot, there isn’t much to go on as far as island survivalist story. That’s because the whole thing is really a mystery.

Before I elaborate on the mystery point, let me say a little something about the tone of the book. At this point Verne had written several books in his The Extraordinary Adventure series. L’École des Robinsons is the twenty-second volume in that series. He knows what he’s doing at this point. That’s important because it supports the idea that the tone of this book is deliberate. It’s not an accident that the narrator is a bit cheeky and occasionally condescending when addressing the reader. He points things out to the reader and sometimes outright says that certain elements of the plot which don’t seem to fit with the rest of the book won’t be explained until later. The narrator is aware that they are telling the story to a reading audience and plays with expectations to a certain degree.

As a whole the tone of the book is light, though occasionally patronizing. The characters are aware of the kind of story they’re living (a “robinsonade”) and the narrator is even more aware. Too much, I’d argue. He invites the reader to make comparisons to the other island survival stories that were known at the time and even makes a few of them himself in the text. None of those comparisons show this particular book in a positive light. It made me wonder on a few occasions why I was reading this book instead of more popular books in this sub-genre such as the original one by Defoe.

It’s this tone and the narrator’s side comments to the reader that makes this book more of a mystery than a story of island survival. It’s a neat idea, but the execution isn’t successful. The narrator calls attention to it too much and the mysteries that are there, particularly the main twist (if you can call it that) are so obvious that it comes off as clumsy. I thought this must have been one of the earlier entries in The Extraordinary Voyages until I looked it up.  Most of the mysteries are solvable before the tell-all final chapter, even for someone like me who is generally terrible at figuring out the culprit in mystery novels. If anything stands out as weird or irrelevant, you can bet your library card on the fact that it’s part of one of the mysteries.

Thankfully the book is breezy because nothing much happens. It feels underdeveloped in addition to being confused about the type of book it wants to be. We’re told numerous times by the narrator and the characters themselves that this is a story in the vein of Robinson Crusoe, but that’s not the kind of story we actually get. There is far too little adventure and survivalist fiction compounded by the presence of an odd narrative voice and underwhelming mysteries. It’s pretty easy to call this my least favourite book by Verne amongst the half dozen I’ve read. I generally like his stories, but this one misses the mark.

Luckily, my father’s edition includes all of the original illustrations by Léon Benett. They are excellent and this book has just over fifty of them. That’s a lot for a book that only runs about 240 pages long. If you have never read a book by Verne before, I strongly recommend pretending this one doesn’t exist and reach for some of his classic titles instead. 

This is the first of 18 books on my Currently Reading List at Goodreads. One of my ready goals for 2020 is to finish reading all 18 books on my CR list. Baby steps, baby steps.

Do you have any reading goals for 2020? If so, share your progress with us in the comments.