The title story of this package is excellent once you get into the style of it anyway. Unfortunately beyond that I just didnt really enjoy any of the other much shorter pieces which did often taper out. D'Arbaud is not a bad writer by any means buti t does seem to be a bit of a case of one-hit wonder status as a book.
four stars for the title story , probably a two for everything else making a reasonable 3.

The Beast and Other Tales by Jóusè d'Arbaud, translated by Joyce Zonana is a amazing work that allows readers of the world to go back in time both to the 15th century protagonist of d’Arbaud but also to the 19th century Provençal Revival that was led by the author.

The book has four novellas of which The Beast or La Bestio dou Vacares is the most eminent. It talks of a world where a demi-bull/demi-god approaches a "guardian" in search of food and together they form a friendship that is both real and not.

The other three short stories carry similar themes of humans in deep relationship with nature, horses and faes.

These stories take you back to a time when you weren't quite sure what to believe, local people still believed things that in our modern society would be laughed at. So the magical and spiritual quality is quite serious. These aren't fairy tales for children.

The Camargue landscape is a character all on its own and it's this that weaves all the stories together in a rather heady and romantic way. I keep thinking about the quality of Zonana’s translation as well, while I do not know for sure the writing is beautiful and from what I have researched she seems to have really captured the sense of the original text.

A beautiful book that's just up my street - I will be raving about it to everyone I know.

Thank you to Northwestern University Press & NetGalley for the Advanced Reader's Copy!

Now available.

Set in the middle of Spain, Jouse d"arbaud's The Best and Other Tales reads like a piece from the American prairie in that the desolate landscape plays a large role in creating the moods for each of the pieces. Adapted from the original manuscript from 1926, the stories in this collection are fast paced yet poignant, pondering on life and beyond.

Stories from one of the last truly wild places in Europe

The Camargue Delta is a place that keep its mysteries. Home to wild horses and bulls, the Roma pilgrimage of Sara-la-Kali, and still largely using the Provencal language of the medieval troubadours, it is an area where memories and stories are long.
D'Arbaud is considered the laureate of the Camargue, his stories set in the world of the bull-herding, horse-taming 'Gardians', whose way of life dates back to Roman times and who have have gathered about themselves a mythology every bit as potent as that of the cowboys, vaqueros, and gauchos of the Americas.
Here are tales of hauntings, of wild bulls and, in the title story, a hint of the timelessness of the Camargue, as a solitary Gardian encounters an ancient entity – reminiscent of the faun from 'Pan's Labyrinth' – at the end of its life. The two strike up an unlikely and uneasy acquaintance, and the dying (Or transforming) demi-god shares the mysteries of the landscape with the human.

Thanks to Northwestern University Press and Netgalley for this ARC

I enjoyed this unusual collection of Provençal stories from the early twentieth century, all of which described the life of the “gardian”, a lonely cowboy existence on the salt plains of the Camargue which I was entirely unfamiliar with before reading this book. The relationship of the men with the animals they tended, the landscape and the weather was beautifully described. Many Provençal words were left peppered in the text when there wasn’t a direct translation to English, and that helped the atmosphere of place.

The main tale, taking up half the short book, was “The Beast” which was a strange medieval horror story featuring a religious young gardian and his encounters with an elderly half-goat half-human demi-god. I enjoyed this story the most.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for providing a review copy in exchange for honest feedback.

This will likely appeal to a pretty narrow audience since it has an academic feel (the set-up, etc, not the cover or description). I see the talent in the writing. I just didn't connect with it very much. True lit fans may like this one.

Thanks very much for the ARC for review!!

Likely to be your first book translated from the Provencal dialect, this academically-presented four-piece is certainly interesting. Almost a hundred years since they were first produced, we get a novella and a trio of shorter works, all based on the life of the "gardians" – outdoorsmen who tend to the wild Camargue horses, and the bulls the locals use for fights and other festivals. The title novella is a little clumsy at first, in pretending it was a diary of one such gardian written in the 1400s, but it soon begins to grip, especially as it's about an unearthly encounter in the boggy terrain of the area. Set closer to time of writing, the first of the three stories has a solitary gardian find platonic pleasure when he opens his doors to a young female from a disliked community – a sort of gadjo or Romany equivalent.

Certainly for many readers details about what goes on in the bullring are a little too much, but the third piece here portrays sympathy not for the bull but the horse the other, human, combatants use; if it works for you you might just get to feel sympathy for the man who works with both beasts, too. And we close with a look at the fallout of someone not recognising our lead gardian's prior claim to a fishing hole. This one isn't great, for it seems to feature the guy thinking of using a fishing line that has been stolen from him and not returned, but all three short stories do have a remarkably fresh style – these could have been written last year, for all the modernism being written in the outside world around their formation.

But what I think I appreciated the most here, despite the rarefied, intriguingly foreign landscape of the Camargue, was the introduction, which packs a welter of learning into its brevity, and fully succeeds in doing what it needs to do – I learnt about the man behind all this, the world behind the man and the world on his pages. This would be classified as literary fiction by practically all, and it will not find a place on many commutes, but in bringing this existence to such vivid life this book really did hit the bullseye, no pun intended. Back at the end of the 1990s I knew my top-to-tail trip through France hadn't really given me the real Camargue, whatever the tour brochures said. This was a much belated corrective – a strong four stars.

I did like elements about these stories but they just missed the mark for me. I liked how they were translated but they just did not work for me completely

I found myself having to do some research on the author to try to muster up some encouragement over this book. It has received a lot of praise in it's original form. The translation also is supposedly spectacular. I myself did not enjoy it beyond the first story in the collection, the one whose title graces the cover. I was surprised at how short each story was, and how abrupt they ended. I can see why other people feel this is a great work which I do not disagree with. For someone like me, it didn't capture my attention too well. Perhaps on a different day. Overall, I'd say read it for the first story and if you liked that one, give the second a chance. The others don't hold up as well. It's quick enough to make you feel like you haven't wasted your time is you dislike it.

Also noted: This book is retailing for $19.99? For how short it is, and how I gauged it...I don't think it's likely I'd been willing to shell out $5.