Résumé
Résumé de La Visite merveilleuse
À qui s’adresse-t-il ?
For readers who love short, witty fantasy, English village comedy, and early Wells in a lighter mood, and anyone who enjoys satire with a soft heart.
De quoi parle ce livre ?
The Wonderful Visit is a short comic fantasy by H. G. Wells, published in 1895. It came early in his career, just after The Time Machine. Wells was then writing scientific romances, and here he turns the same sharp eye on a quiet English village. A strange visitor drops into ordinary life, and the village shows what it is made of.
The visitor is an angel from another world. He is shot down by a country vicar who is out hunting a rare bird, and he lands among people who have no idea what to do with him. The book gives you a gentle satire, a love story of a kind, and a long look at what we call normal. Wells asks what a creature of pure beauty would make of money, manners, clothes and class. Let us begin with the moment of the shot.
Dans ce résumé
- 1A vicar shoots something strangeFree
- 2The angel meets ordinary life
- 3Delia and the village take notice
- 4Music, money and the cost of belonging
- 5What the story is really about
- 6How Wells tells it
Point clé 1 sur 6
A vicar shoots something strange
The story opens in the English countryside near the village of Siddermorton. The local vicar, the Reverend Hilyer, keeps a keen interest in birds. One evening he hears about a strange and brilliant bird seen in the sky, and he goes out with his gun to find it.
He fires at what he takes for a rare specimen. The creature drops, and when he reaches it, he finds no bird at all. Instead he finds a human shape with great colored wings, wounded and confused. The vicar is a decent man, and his first feeling is shock and guilt at what he has done.
The angel does not behave like any patient the vicar has met. He speaks gently, in a clear way, and he has no idea where he is. He comes from a land that lies alongside our own, a place of beauty and music, where people live by different rules. A kind of rift between the worlds has let him slip across, and he has been caught in our air.
The vicar brings him back to his own house and sets about caring for him. From this moment the book turns on one comic idea. A being who knows nothing of our customs must now be explained to a village that wants to explain him away. The vicar, who has spent years collecting facts about birds, now has the greatest specimen of his life in his own spare room.
That’s 1 of 6 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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Questions about La Visite merveilleuse
What is The Wonderful Visit about?
It follows an angel who is shot down by a country vicar and then lives among villagers in England. His simple questions show how strange human customs, money and class look to an outsider.
When was The Wonderful Visit written?
H. G. Wells published it in 1895, soon after The Time Machine. It is a fantasy and satire, not a true story, and it is set in an English village of its own time.
Is The Wonderful Visit a science fiction novel?
Not quite. It is a comic fantasy and social satire. Unlike his scientific romances, it uses an angel instead of a machine or experiment to examine human society.
Who is Delia in The Wonderful Visit?
Delia is a young servant in the vicar's household. She is poor and often ignored, but she treats the angel with kindness and becomes the person closest to him.
Is The Wonderful Visit hard to read?
No. It is short, with a light and witty narrator and simple scenes. The story is easy to follow and the humor is gentle.