Lacretelle, Jacques de (1888-1985). French novelist, best known for Silbermann (1922), which followed the introspective, melancholy La Vie inquiète de Jean Hamelin (1920). The strong, economical narrative of Silbermann charts the appearance of a gifted, compelling Jewish boy in the life of the insecure, lonely Protestant narrator, and the enthusiasms and betrayals of their alliance. A sequel, Le Retour de Silbermann (1929), is harsher, more Gidean. Lacretelle wrote family chronicles—Les Hauts Ponts (1932-35)—and treated public themes (civilian resistance to German occupation: La Bonifas, 1925) but in his work the focus is always not so much political as psychological. He translated Mary Webb and Emily Brontë.
[Margaret Callander]
