Tag: France

The Sea Sisters by Louise Douglas

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I’ve read several standalone novels by Louise Douglas and enjoyed them all, but haven’t tried any of the books in her detective series set in France until now. This is the fourth in the series so I hoped it wouldn’t matter that I hadn’t read the other three – and it didn’t, although there’s one ongoing storyline that would probably have meant more if I’d read the previous books.

Mila Shepherd works at Touissants Detective Agency in the Britanny coastal town of Morannez with her stepmother Ceci and their colleague, Carter Jackson. Mila came to France after the tragic deaths of her stepsister Sophie and her husband in a sailing accident and is looking after her orphaned niece, Ani, as well as taking Sophie’s place at the agency. Mila has discovered that Sophie was trying to contact her on the day of the accident and when she comes across a note left in Sophie’s kitchen – Call Mila. Tell her the truth. Ask her to help – she is filled with guilt, convinced that if she’d answered her phone that day she could have saved her stepsister.

Meanwhile, Mila, Ceci and Carter have an intriguing new case to investigate, which begins with a young woman, introducing herself as Nicole Stevenson, arriving at the detective agency. Nicole claims to have discovered that she is really Evie Albert, who disappeared from a festival in Morranez twenty-five years ago as a two-year-old child. The case was never solved at the time and Evie has never been found, so Mila and her colleagues agree to look into Nicole’s story. Their investigations take them to the Holywell Commune, a former convent which is now home to a group who are hostile to strangers and reluctant to answer any questions. But as Mila continues her search for proof of Nicole’s claim, she begins to find links to Sophie’s death. It seems the two separate mysteries are somehow connected, but how?

Although I haven’t read the previous novels, it seems that the storyline involving the deaths at sea of Sophie and her husband, Charlie, has been running throughout the whole series, presumably with a few more details emerging in each book. At the start of this one, Mila still doesn’t know what happened, why two experienced sailors went out in bad weather or why Sophie had been trying to speak to her. Maybe because I haven’t been following this story from the beginning, I found it less interesting than the Nicole/Evie one, which was fascinating. Is Nicole really Evie, kidnapped as a child and raised under a new name? Is she just so desperate to escape from her own past that she’s convinced herself she’s someone else? Is she deliberately lying for some unknown reason – or could there be another explanation for the whole thing?

I enjoyed the book overall, but it felt a bit longer than it really needed to be; for example, there’s an interlude in the middle where Mila goes home to England to visit her mother, which had no relevance to the rest of the story and did nothing to move the plot along at all. I also didn’t quite understand the tension in Mila’s relationship with Carter, who seemed like a good person – maybe that’s another thing that would have made more sense if I’d read the earlier books. I did love the setting; Louise Douglas is always so good at bringing a place to life and here she combines the beauty of the Brittany coast during a hot summer with more sinister undertones, as she describes the oppressive, cult-like atmosphere of the Holywell Commune or Mila’s discovery of a dolmen – one of the ancient stone tombs found in that part of France.

Both mysteries are brought to a satisfying conclusion by the end of the novel. I don’t know if there are plans for more books in this series, but I would like to go back and read the first three at some point and also still have some of the author’s other standalones to investigate.

Thanks to Boldwood Books for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

The Alchemist’s Secret by Clare Marchant

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The Alchemist’s Secret is the story of two women separated by four centuries but linked through one house – Woodham Hall in Suffolk. In 1672, Jeanne is living at the Hall with her older sister, Marie, and young niece, Hélène. Jeanne is still unmarried at the age of twenty-four and looks set to remain a spinster, but she doesn’t really care. She’s happy devoting her time to painting and practising her alchemy skills, and there’s no money for a dowry anyway. Marie, on the other hand, is very unhappily married; her husband, Sir Robert Woodham, is having an affair with a widowed neighbour who has given him the sons Marie has been unable to provide. Eventually, Sir Robert decides to move his mistress into the Hall and tells Marie and Jeanne he is sending them to a convent in France where they will stay for the rest of their lives.

Back in their home country – the two women had left France ten years earlier, when Marie married Sir Robert – they are determined to find a way to escape from their captivity and get back to England and Hélène. Their adventures take them to the court of the Sun King where they make some new acquaintances whom they hope can help them take revenge against Sir Robert and resume their rightful places at Woodham Hall.

Meanwhile, in 2026, we meet the current residents of Woodham Hall – Simon and his daughter, Paige, who has just returned home after the break-up of her marriage. Simon has been hiring the house out as a wedding venue but is starting to struggle financially and is in need of new ideas. Paige begins to research the history of the Hall and the Woodham family and comes across an intriguing painting which seems to depict a poisoning which took place in the house centuries earlier. But who was the artist – and, more importantly, who were the victims and why were they killed?

I liked The Alchemist’s Secret, although it’s yet another example of a book with dual timelines where most of the drama unfolds in one of them, leaving the other feeling a bit superfluous. The 17th century storyline dominates this book and I found it by far the most interesting. The plot was slightly far-fetched at times and there were moments when attitudes or actions didn’t quite ring true to the period, but otherwise I was much more absorbed in Jeanne and Marie’s story than I was in Paige’s. I loved the parts of the book set in Paris and at the Palace of Versailles (which is still under construction in 1672 – no Hall of Mirrors yet) and I thought this made a good contrast to the English country house that forms the setting for the majority of the novel.

There’s not a lot of mystery involved, as it’s obvious that the events depicted in the painting are connected to the historical storyline, but I enjoyed seeing how the characters get to that point and how things play out afterwards. I’m not sure if the title is really representative of the novel, though; alchemy is barely mentioned, although it doesn’t matter too much as the story is interesting enough even without it! This is the first book I’ve read by Clare Marchant but I’m planning to read her new one, The Curse of the Saltmarsh Girl, and am tempted to try some of her others as they all sound intriguing.

Thanks to Boldwood Books for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

The Lost Château by Dinah Jefferies

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Last year I read and enjoyed Dinah Jefferies’ The Greek House. The Lost Château is a sequel of sorts, but it’s not necessary to have read the previous book first.

Most of the novel is set in 1936 and follows one of the characters from The Greek House, Thirza Caruthers, who is now living with her Italian husband, Emilio Bellini, at Merchant’s House in Corfu with their five-year-old daughter Romi and Emilio’s two twin daughters from his first marriage, Lucia and Valentina. When nineteen-year-old Lucia becomes a supporter of Mussolini’s Fascist movement and runs away to Spain to get involved in the Civil War, Emilio insists on going after her to bring her home, much to Thirza’s horror. However, Thirza will be kept busy during Emilio’s absence, because her great-aunt Berenice has been in hospital and needs someone to care for her when she returns home.

Berenice lives in France, in an old château in the Dordogne, leading a solitary existence since the death of her daughter, Sophie, and the disappearance of her husband many years earlier. Accompanied by Valentina and Romi, Thirza goes to stay with Berenice, where she continues to worry about Emilio but finds distractions in trying to keep the crumbling, neglected château clean and tidy and in delving into the mystery of Berenice’s past. Why is Berenice so hostile and withdrawn? Who is the mysterious Géraldine who once lived in a cottage on the estate? And what really happened to Sophie all those years ago?

I’m counting The Lost Château towards Paris in July hosted by Emma of Words and Peace as most of the book is set in France, mainly in the Dordogne region near Sarlat-la-Canéda. As usual with Dinah Jefferies, everything is beautifully described from the 17th century stone château surrounded by forest to the cobbled streets and busy shops of Sarlat. We also briefly see Paris when Thirza and Valentina are invited to visit Jean-Paul, a widower whose mother is hoping to buy Berenice’s château. Thirza is immediately attracted to Jean-Paul and spends the whole book battling with her feelings for him, a storyline which annoyed me as Thirza claims to love her husband but makes no attempt to understand why he’s prepared to enter a dangerous warzone to rescue his daughter and accuses him of being selfish. Thirza herself was the one who seemed selfish to me – although to give her some credit, she does start to think differently about things by the end of the book.

Although I loved the French setting, Lucia’s story sounded fascinating and I was sorry that we only hear about it from a distance as news from Spain reaches Thirza. I would have liked some chapters from Lucia’s point of view to see the Spanish Civil War unfold at first hand and to understand what drives a vulnerable young woman towards radical politics. I suppose that would have made the book too long! We do, however, get some chapters from Berenice’s perspective, set several decades earlier when she first comes to live at the château as a young wife and mother. Berenice’s story is sad and shocking and explains why she has become the unhappy, prickly person we meet in the 1930s timeline.

This isn’t my favourite book by Dinah Jefferies but I did find it interesting. I wonder if there will be a third novel about these characters; the way this one ended made me think that there could be, as various family members are now positioned in different places around Europe with the outbreak of the Second World War approaching.

Thanks to HarperCollins for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

Book 6/20 of 20 Books of Summer

The Unicorn Hunters by Katherine Arden

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This was one of my most anticipated new releases of the year, having loved first Katherine Arden’s Winternight trilogy and then her standalone novel, The Warm Hands of Ghosts. The Unicorn Hunters promised the same blend of history, fantasy and folklore and sounded just as fascinating.

The novel is set in 15th century Brittany, at that time an independent duchy. Following the death of Duke Francis II, his daughter, Anne, has succeeded him as Duchess of Brittany. She believes she will be able to govern Brittany well and had promised her father she would never allow it to be conquered, but naturally a land ruled by a young, unmarried woman quickly comes under threat from other, more powerful nations. Determined to avoid a union with France at all costs, Anne secretly marries Maximilian of Austria by proxy but as she waits for her new husband to join her in Brittany, Charles VIII of France and his forces draw closer to the duchy.

As a delaying tactic, Anne suggests a unicorn hunt in the enchanted forest of Brocéliande. She’s sure the king and his men will be unable to resist the temptation of capturing a magical beast – and according to legend, a unicorn can only be tamed by a virgin, which means Anne should be able to avoid being forced into marriage with Charles until Maximilian arrives and her secret can be revealed. No one is really expecting to see a unicorn – until one emerges from the trees and allows Anne to take a lock of its mane. With Anne under increasing pressure to agree to the French marriage, it seems there could be a way to save Brittany after all, but it will mean delving further into the world of magic.

I really enjoyed The Unicorn Hunters, although I found it a bit uneven. The first half is mainly concerned with the politics of Brittany and France, with only a few fantasy elements: the brief appearance of the unicorn, whom we don’t see again until later; the role of diviners who use dice, wine or beetles to spy on rival courts and coloured cloths to communicate what they’ve learned; and a man who stumbles out of the Lost Lands, a sinister realm that borders the forest of Brocéliande and is inhabited by korrigans (Breton fairies or spirits). I was reminded very much of Guy Gavriel Kay’s books, which are mostly set in thinly disguised worlds based on real countries and real historical periods and have subtle supernatural touches. In the second half of this novel, though, the fantasy elements become much stronger as Anne and her friends and enemies move in and out of the Lost Lands.

I liked Anne as a character, but I should point out that the Anne of Brittany in this book is not quite the same as the historical one and her story follows a different path, so be aware that you aren’t learning the ‘real history’ here. For example, the real Anne was eleven when she succeeded to the duchy, but Katherine Arden’s Anne is an adult. Other characters, such as Louis of Orléans and Anne’s sister Isabeau, have also had large parts of their stories altered – and Charles VIII’s sister, Anne of France, is renamed Marguerite to avoid confusion. Arden explains some of her choices in an author’s note at the end of the book, although I wonder whether it would have been more sensible to have just changed the names of all of the people and places, like Kay does, and set the book in an entirely alternate version of history.

Something I really loved about this book is the way so many aspects of Breton myth and legend are incorporated into the story: the mythical lost city of Kêr-Is, swallowed up by the sea in the Bay of Douarnenez; the presence of the korrigans and the anaon (spirits of the dead); the ancient forest of Brocéliande, associated with Merlin and the Arthurian legends; and of course, the unicorn – but unicorns obviously appear in the myths of other cultures as well. The real Anne of Brittany does actually have a connection with unicorns as it has been speculated that she commissioned the famous set of tapestries known as The Unicorn Tapestries, although this has never been proven.

I preferred the earlier sections of the book as I felt there was a definite shift in tone and pace in the second half, but I’m sure other readers will have the opposite preference depending on whether you like your fiction to be more grounded in history and politics or more fantasy-heavy. The Winternight books are still my favourites by Katherine Arden (start with The Bear and the Nightingale and read all three in order) but this was enjoyable as well and I’ll be looking out for her next book.

Thanks to Random House UK/Century for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

Book 3/20 of 20 Books of Summer

The Lost Orphans of Lyon by Helen Parusel

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There are so many books set during the two world wars, it can be easy to think that you’ve read enough of them and don’t need any more…but I’m so pleased I didn’t overlook The Lost Orphans of Lyon. Although I’ve read other novels about the French Resistance, this one touches on aspects that were new to me, such as the role of the Huguenot community of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon in sheltering hundreds of child refugees fleeing the Nazis.

Although the novel is inspired by real historical events, the story is told through the eyes of two fictional women. Yvette Dubois and her husband Armand have been married for just two weeks when they receive the news that Armand’s brother, Lucien, has died, leaving them to inherit his crumbling château and vineyard in the French countryside. Armand insists that he can’t leave his business in Lyon, so it falls to Yvette to take on the management of their new property. With only a hostile housekeeper for company, Yvette is annoyed at being abandoned so early into her marriage, but she soon finds a sense of purpose when she hears a knocking from behind a tapestry in the library. Pulling back the tapestry, she opens a hidden door to discover a young woman with two small children. It seems that Lucien was part of an escape network smuggling vulnerable children to safety in the nearby village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon.

To put things in context, it’s September 1942 and a large part of France is under Nazi occupation. The area around Lucien’s château has remained part of the ‘free zone’, but will soon become occupied as well. When Yvette decides to continue Lucien’s work, she knows how dangerous it will be – particularly when she learns that Armand is collaborating with the Germans.

Part of the book is also written from the perspective of Marie, a seventeen-year-old girl who lives in Chambon. Marie is in love with Pierre, a man who has joined the maquis – the band of armed fighters hiding in the countryside and working on behalf of the French Resistance. Determined to play her own part in defying the Nazis, Marie takes on the job of collecting the children at the other end of the tunnel from the château and bringing them to the village to be housed.

Yvette and Marie are both very engaging characters – two women from completely different backgrounds, but dedicated to the same cause. I liked both of them and was equally invested in each of the two narratives. This is a book I didn’t want to put down…and when I did have to, I couldn’t wait to get back to it! With the stakes being so high, there’s a real sense of danger throughout the novel (the Nazi characters are as horrible and brutal as you would expect) and there’s no guarantee that any of the people involved in the escape chain are going to survive.

As well as the storyline with the children, Yvette and Marie both have their own personal stories – Yvette’s discovery that her husband isn’t the man she thought she knew and Marie’s love for Pierre, despite the disapproval of her parents – as well as some subplots involving other characters, such as the servants at the château. I thought the balance between the historical and the personal was just about right, although other readers may prefer more or less of one or the other. Overall, though, I found this a vivid and moving portrayal of life in Occupied France.

This is the first book I’ve read by Helen Parusel. I see she has written three others dealing with the resistance movements in other parts of Europe, so after enjoying this book so much, I would definitely like to try another one. I just need to decide which one to choose next!

Thanks to Boldwood Books for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

Letter to My Judge by Georges Simenon

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Translated by Howard Curtis

Georges Simenon is more famous for his Maigret detective series, but he also wrote a large number of standalone psychological thrillers which he described as romans durs, or ‘hard novels’, in reference to the dark, bleak atmosphere and difficult, harrowing lives of the characters. I’ve read five of them now and Letter to My Judge is the darkest so far. It was originally published in French in 1947 and is now available from Penguin Classics in a new English translation.

As the title suggests, the book is written in the form of a letter. The writer is Dr Charles Alavoine and we know from the beginning that he is in prison, having just been found guilty of murder. The Judge of the title is an examining magistrate, or juge d’instruction to use the French term, the person responsible for carrying out a pre-trial investigation and preparing the evidence. During his trial, Charles heard the Judge state that he didn’t think the murder was premeditated, so he’s decided to write him a letter proving that it really was premeditated and that he knew exactly what he was doing when he committed the crime. It may seem an odd thing to want to prove, but Charles feels that it’s important to have his full story heard by someone.

In his letter, Alavoine begins by looking back at his early days when he qualified as a doctor and bought a practice in the town of La Roche-sur-Yon in western France. We then hear about his first wife, who died in childbirth, and the arrival of Armande, who came to take care of his young daughters and ended up marrying him. Armande is a practical, capable woman who quickly begins to dominate the household, the medical practice and every aspect of her husband’s life. Charles doesn’t love her but he needs a wife and she seems to be as good a choice as any. Things change when he meets a young woman, Martine, at a station and feels a desire for her that he has never felt for Armande. Charles is determined not to lose Martine now that he has found her, but events quickly begin to spiral out of control, leading to the crime for which he will later stand trial.

With the whole book written from Charles Alavoine’s perspective, this means we get right inside the mind of a killer, which makes this an intense, uncomfortable read. Alavoine has few, if any, redeeming qualities and is an unpleasant, abusive person from beginning to end. Apparently this was a deeply personal book for Simenon, who said “I wrote it in order to rid myself of my ghosts, not to commit the same deed carried out by my protagonist”. It seems that Simenon himself, like Alavoine, treated the women in his life badly, which is disappointing to know, although he at least had enough self-awareness to write an honest, reflective book like this one. It’s definitely a very disturbing story, though, even more so than the others I’ve read by him and I’m sure the autobiographical aspect is partly responsible for that.

As well as being an unsettling book to read, it’s also quite a gripping one. Although there’s not really any mystery as we already know the outcome of Alavoine’s story from the beginning, we don’t know what led him to that point so there’s still some suspense as we watch everything unfold. It’s not my favourite of the romans durs I’ve read so far, but it’s certainly a powerful novel and not one I’ll forget easily.

Thanks to Penguin Classics for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

An Astronomer in Love by Antoine Laurain – #ReadIndies

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Translated by Louise Rogers Lalaurie and Megan Jones

I’ve been aware of Antoine Laurain’s books for years but this is the first one I’ve read. It was originally published in French in 2022 as Les caprices d’un astre and is now available in an English translation from Pushkin Press. I’m counting it towards this year’s Read Indies month, hosted by Karen of Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings, which celebrates books published by independent publishers.

An Astronomer in Love is a dual timeline novel. One thread of the story is set in contemporary Paris, where divorced estate agent Xavier Lemercier has found an old telescope in a property he’s sold. He discovers that the telescope once belonged to the 18th century astronomer Guillaume Le Gentil, but he’s reluctant to give it to a museum and takes it home so he and his eleven-year-old son can use it to look at the night sky. Setting up the telescope on the terrace of his apartment, Xavier tests it out by looking at the nearby buildings – and is intrigued when he spots a woman on her balcony with what appears to be a zebra. Who is she and why would she have a zebra living in her apartment? Xavier is determined to find out!

In a second narrative which alternates with the first, we meet Guillaume Le Gentil as he sets out on a voyage to India in 1760, hoping to observe the transit of Venus across the face of the sun. Unfortunately, due to delays and bad weather, he misses the transit and decides to stay in that part of the world until the next one eight years later. The novel describes his adventures during this period and the people and wildlife he encounters.

Guillaume Le Gentil is a real historical figure and the expedition covered in the novel really happened. It was fascinating to read about his visits to Madagascar, the Philippines, Pondicherry and the Isle de France (now Mauritius), and his observations of creatures such as flying fish, giant tortoises, ring-tailed lemurs, and even dodos, which would be considered extinct just a few years later. I think Guillaume’s story would have been interesting enough to fill a whole book on its own, but I felt that I didn’t get the chance to know him on a personal level as much as I would have liked, because we kept having to leave him behind to return to Xavier in the modern day.

Xavier’s timeline is linked to Guillaume’s in several ways, the telescope being just one of them. Sometimes a word, phrase or thought, or a sighting of a particular bird or animal will lead seamlessly from one narrative to the other. It’s difficult to explain what I mean, but it’s cleverly done and works well. Although, as I’ve said, I would have been happy to stay with the historical timeline all the way through, Xavier’s story was also entertaining, apart from a strange episode involving terrorism that felt out of place. There’s a romance for both main characters too – and Venus, of course, is the goddess of love, so there’s some symbolism there, with the transit of Venus playing an important part in both threads of the novel.

Antoine Laurain’s other books all sound intriguing and I liked this one enough to want to try another one. If you’ve read any of them, which would you recommend?