The Paris AtlasCharting the artists, works, and places worth returning to.
Illustrated portrait of Madame Desrochelles

A character in A Very Long Engagement

Madame Desrochelles

The grieving mother who accepts amnesiac Manech as her dead son.

What they want

To keep a son after war has taken her own.

The book

Cover of A Very Long Engagement by Sébastien Japrisot
A Very Long EngagementSébastien Japrisot, 1991

A young artist rebuilds the truth about five condemned soldiers from letters, witnesses, codes, and stubborn love.

View the book

At a glance

Role
Jean Desrochelles's mother
Pressure
The grieving mother who accepts amnesiac Manech as her dead son.
Goal
To keep a son after war has taken her own.
Evidence
She protects Manech under Jean's identity and becomes Mathilde's mother-in-law.

Who they are in the book

Spoiler-free

Madame Desrochelles is jean desrochelles's mother. The grieving mother who accepts amnesiac Manech as her dead son.

The character wants to keep a son after war has taken her own.. That desire determines what is remembered, hidden, or investigated.

She protects Manech under Jean's identity and becomes Mathilde's mother-in-law. The detail matters because Mathilde can reach the truth only by comparing partial accounts.

How Madame Desrochelles Is Portrayed

Appearance, manner, and tone — as the book sketches them, in our words.

  • RoleJean Desrochelles's mother
  • PressureThe grieving mother who accepts amnesiac Manech as her dead son.
  • GoalTo keep a son after war has taken her own.
  • EvidenceShe protects Manech under Jean's identity and becomes Mathilde's mother-in-law.
What happens to Madame DesrochellesHow the book leaves them, what happened after, and what the record says. Open when you're ready.

She protects Manech under Jean's identity and becomes Mathilde's mother-in-law.

If you like A Very Long Engagement

Four books that share themes, tone, or setting with this one.

If you like Sébastien Japrisot

Explore authors with a similar voice, perspective, and influence.

  • Illustrated portrait of Toni Morrison

    Toni Morrison

    American novelist and Nobel laureate; a correspondent and ally of James Baldwin who gave a eulogy at his 1987 funeral.

    View author
  • Illustrated portrait of Charles Dickens

    Charles Dickens

    The most popular English novelist of the nineteenth century, who was never a Paris resident in the ordinary sense but kept coming back for twenty-five years: one winter in a rented mansion on the rue de Courcelles, a second winter on the Champs-Élysées writing Little Dorrit, repeated compulsive visits to the Paris Morgue — the riverside building where the city displayed its unidentified dead to the public — and a novel of the French Revolution, A Tale of Two Cities, that has shaped how English readers picture Paris ever since.

    View author
  • Illustrated portrait of Louis-Ferdinand Céline

    Louis-Ferdinand Céline

    The doctor of the Paris slums who wrote the century's blackest, funniest novel — and changed the sound of French prose.

    View author