Notes

Facts
-This is an autobiographical novel by Romain Gary
-During the childhood part of the book he is trying to impress his mom and not make her sacrifices go to waste
-Even in chapters where his mom doesnt matter, he still talks abt her
-Moms lifelong dream is to see her son win the war
-His mom was diabetic, in the hospital a lot
-Romain is pretty weak : he once cried over a lost jacket
-The mom gets super proud of her son super easily, ie running in the streets yelling out his achievements

Plot
-He lives with his mom in a village in Poland called Wilno for most of his childhoot, og from Russia, moves to France
-his dad left them when she got pregnant, and later died via heart attack in the beginning of the war in line at a concentration camp abt to get burned
-his mom really wants him to be big and famous one day, someone who will go down in history (like a french ambassador or a famous writer)
-she made him go to many classes and practice many things in hopes of discovering his "hidden talent"
-examples are dance lessons, singing lessons, soldier lessons (??)
-Him and his mum go through many phases of breif richness like being able to live in houses or poor like when he had to sleep in a dentists office
-Once his mom became rich by opening a fake designer clothes shop
-At one point, her proposed to 2 women, the first women he met and within half an hour proposed to her, while he was out getting papers for the marriage she found another man
-The second woman was his friends sister, they got engaged but he forgot about her when he went to war, she found another man
-At one point he found another woman and she was cheating on him all the time, she claimed that she was leaving to help a sickly old woman a lot (they were living tgth) but she was actually seeing smn else, one day, he follows her in secret to help the sickly woman but sees his girl getting humped by the other man on the balcony
-One day, he has to go to war, so he sends her letters a lot and they communicate via letters
-He travels a lot during hte 4 year period where he goes to war, from england to africa, to england and back to France when the war ends
-During the war, so many people die that in teh book he talks about them nonchalantly, at one point, he and his soldier friends are about to ride a plane and Romain told him to take another route, but his friend didnt listen so Romain didnt take the plane, friends died burnt in the crashed plane, Romain survived, was constantly belittled for it
-Whenever he failed in the war he heard his moms voice calling him a traitor and all for throwing her sacrifices out
-At one point, in the letters he told his mom he wrote a book and he expected that in the response she would be super proud because of previous experiences but no, so he was a little sad and confused
-turns out, his mom died after about the first year of the war and the letters were just slowly sent ot him over the years by her moms friends (his mom prewrote letters) because she asked them to do this (because she said he was super sensitive and he wouldnt be able to fight well with the knowledge she was dead)
-super sad because she never got to see him win the war (her dream)