A Hundred Million Years and a Day - Jean-Baptiste Andrea

 

Jean-Baptiste Andrea is a successful French novelist, screenwriter, and director whose work I have been unaware of until this month’s U.S. publication of his second novel, A Hundred Million Years and a Day. Andrea’s first novel, Ma Reine (My Queen), won its share of awards, including one for Best French Debut Novel. Andrea is not a particularly prolific writer, and that’s a shame, because A Hundred Million Years and a Day is one of the most memorable novels I’ve read so far in 2020. I was disappointed to find that he does not have a long backlist for me to explore.

 

Perhaps the most amazing thing about A Hundred Million Years and a Day is how deeply Andrea manages to explore the makeup of his four main characters within the confines of the 160 pages he allows himself to tell his story. Stan, the narrator is an obsessed paleontologist who has been estranged from his father for years; Umberto is a student Stan once mentored, a man still willing to risk his life for Stan; Peter is a German student currently being mentored by Stan in a relationship much like the one Stan and Umberto still have; and Gio is the mountain-climbing guide tasked with keeping all of them alive. As the characters and their relationships evolve in real time, their individual backstories are provided via brief flashbacks that turn them into real people.

 

Stan has been a budding paleontologist since he was six years old and discovered his first fossil while breaking rocks with a hammer out of anger. As he puts it:

 

            “I imagined the face of Miss Thiers (his teacher) on its surface – and one, two, three – dealt her a vengeful blow. The stone immediately split open, as if it had just been pretending to be whole. And, from its mineral depths, my trilobite looked me in the eye, every bit as surprised as I was.

 

            It was three hundred million years old, and I was six.”

 

Jean-Baptiste Andrea

That was in 1908. Now it is 1954, and Stan is living his childhood dream. Now 52 years old, Stan has just heard a credible story about the chance discovery of a unique fossil decades earlier by a frightened teen forced into a cave during a mountain snowstorm. The huge skeleton described to him sounds suspiciously like what could be the first complete brontosaurus fossil to be discovered or even that of an entirely new species.

 

So now Stan, Umberto, Peter, and Gio are on top of a remote mountain in search of the lost cave and its mysterious inhabitant. And the clock is ticking. If they don’t leave the mountain top before winter sets in, and the only way down ices over, they will die there. Only Gio, with all of his mountain-climbing experience, can tell when it’s time to give up the search and head down. But what if the others won’t listen to him?

 

Bottom Line: While there is an incredible amount of story and character development packed into this short novel, the author still manages to convey a vivid sense of his mountain top setting and the harsh elements with which his characters are having to deal. As the weather worsens, tempers flare, and exhaustion sets in, a sense of dread develops, and A Hundred Million Years and a Day becomes a real page-turner. This is a good one.

Advance Reading Copy Provided by Publisher for Review Purposes