Tag: France

The Glass-Blowers by Daphne du Maurier

19 Comments

A glass blower, remember, breathes life into a vessel, giving it shape and form and sometimes beauty; but he can, with that same breath, shatter and destroy it.

The Glass-Blowers The Glass-Blowers was the book selected for me in the last Classics Spin at the end of August. The deadline for reading our Spin book is this Friday, so I’ve finished just in time! Although it has taken me a while to actually pick this novel up and read it, that’s not because I wasn’t looking forward to it. Daphne du Maurier is one of my favourite authors and I fully expected to love this book as I’ve loved most of her others. That didn’t really happen, unfortunately, but I did still find things to enjoy.

Published in 1963, The Glass-Blowers is historical fiction based on the lives of du Maurier’s own ancestors who lived in France during the Revolution. The story is narrated by Sophie Duval, an elderly woman writing her family history in the form of a letter to send to her nephew. Sophie begins by looking back on her childhood growing up in the Loir-et-Cher region of France as the daughter of master glass-blower Mathurin Busson. Most of her early memories revolve around her eldest brother, Robert, who is constantly getting into debt and finding himself in trouble. It is Robert who will eventually move to England and provide the link to Daphne du Maurier herself.

In France, meanwhile, Sophie and her other siblings – Pierre, Michel and Edmé – become swept up in the drama of the French Revolution. So much of what I’ve read about the Revolution is focused on Paris, so it was fascinating to read about the ways in which it affected the lives of those living in the countryside and in other cities such as Le Mans. The section set during the War in the Vendée is particularly gripping and vivid – probably because Sophie herself is caught up in the uprising and experiences it directly. Other major events happen in the background and Sophie only hears thirdhand accounts, which takes away some of the emotional impact of the story (I kept thinking of The Brethren by Robert Merle, another novel set in France which is written in a similarly passive style).

The distance between narrator and reader meant that I never became fully engaged in the lives of the Bussons and never felt that I had really got to know Sophie. Her brother and sisters were stronger characters, particularly Michel, who becomes a political activist and joins the National Guard, and Robert, who repeatedly reinvents himself as one business venture after another ends in failure. Robert infuriated me at first but he eventually became my favourite character and I found myself looking forward to his scenes as they added a spark of life to what I was beginning to find quite a tedious story.

One of the things I usually love about du Maurier is her descriptive writing and the way she creates a strong sense of time and place – and this is something that I thought was missing from The Glass-Blowers (apart from in the Vendée scenes, as I mentioned above). This hasn’t become a favourite du Maurier book, then, but in my opinion even her weaker novels are still worth reading. Now that I’ve read this one I’m planning to read Mary Anne, another fictional account of one of du Maurier’s ancestors, this time on the English side of the family. After that I’ll only have Frenchman’s Creek and Castle Dor left to read.

The Vicomte de Bragelonne by Alexandre Dumas

12 Comments

The Vicomte de Bragelonne This is the third Dumas novel to feature d’Artagnan and his three friends, Athos, Porthos and Aramis. Originally published in serial form as part of a much longer book, it is now usually split into three volumes of which The Vicomte de Bragelonne is the first and Louise de la Vallière and The Man in the Iron Mask are the others. As Dumas is one of my favourite authors I was fully expecting to love this book – and I did, although it was not quite as satisfying as the first two d’Artagnan novels – The Three Musketeers and Twenty Years After.

The first thing to say about The Vicomte de Bragelonne is that it is not really about the Vicomte de Bragelonne! He does appear near the beginning and again near the end, but his role in the story is not really any more significant than any number of other characters. The next thing I should say is that any reader hoping to find the four friends working together again in the spirit of “all for one and one for all” will be disappointed; we do see quite a lot of Athos, but Porthos and Aramis only come into the story very briefly towards the end.

So, what is this book about, then? Well, possibly because this is only one section of a longer work, it’s difficult to give a summary of the plot. The first half of the novel concentrates mainly on d’Artagnan and Athos who are working on two separate schemes both designed to restore Charles II to the throne of England. History tells us that the restoration would be accomplished – though not quite in the way described in this book, which is much more fun than what actually happened!

Later in the book we learn that Aramis and Porthos seem to be helping the Superintendent of Finances, Monsieur Fouquet, to build fortifications on the island of Belle-Île. We don’t find out exactly what they are up to, however, and this part of the story is left shrouded in mystery, presumably to be developed in the next two novels. Finally, there’s the storyline involving the title character, Raoul (the Vicomte), and his love for Louise de la Vallière.

The gaps between these three subplots are filled with lots of chapters detailing the political situation in France in the 1660s (particularly the death of Cardinal Mazarin and the rivalry between Fouquet and Louis XIV’s new Minister of Finance, Colbert) and the romantic intrigues of the French court (revolving around the King’s marriage and also his brother’s marriage to Charles II’s sister, Henrietta). All of this makes The Vicomte de Bragelonne a heavier, slower read than the previous two novels, but I didn’t find it boring at all – I love the way Dumas writes and I love French history, so I didn’t really mind the fact that there was less swashbuckling action and that we don’t see as much of d’Artagnan’s friends.

Of course, where history (or even geography) is concerned it can’t always be assumed that everything in a Dumas novel is completely accurate. I was amazed to find that in Dumas’ world the city of Newcastle had suddenly been transported from the River Tyne to the banks of the River Tweed sixty miles to the north! Dumas also tends to change dates or rearrange the sequence of events whenever the story calls for it as well, though I’m sure I wouldn’t have even noticed most of these alterations if I hadn’t been referring to the notes at the back of the book. I’m pleased to say, by the way, that the notes in the Oxford World’s Classics edition didn’t spoil any of the story – although I avoided the introduction just in case.

As The Vicomte de Bragelonne doesn’t stand alone as a complete novel and wasn’t originally intended to, there are a lot of things left unresolved at the end of the book, as you would expect. I’m looking forward to continuing the story soon with Louise de la Vallière!

Cousin Bette by Honoré de Balzac

8 Comments

Cousin Bette Balzac is an author I have wanted to try for years but have kept putting off, partly because I thought he sounded intimidating and difficult to read and partly because he wrote so many books it was hard to know where to start! Then, last month I chose ten books at random from my Goodreads “to-read” shelf – and one of them was Cousin Bette, a novel I couldn’t even remember adding to my shelf in the first place, but which sounded very appealing. I obviously couldn’t put off reading Balzac any longer!

Cousin Bette (originally La Cousine Bette and sometimes translated as Cousin Betty) was published in 1846 and is set in 19th century Paris. The title character is Lisbeth – Bette – Fischer, a relation of the Hulot family who has always been jealous of her beautiful cousin Adeline. Plain, poor, and having turned down several marriage proposals, Bette is still unmarried at the age of forty-two. When she rescues a young Polish sculptor, Wenceslas Steinbock, from a suicide attempt and takes him under her wing, she is pleased to be able to tell everyone that she has a lover at last. Her happiness is shattered, however, when Adeline’s daughter, Hortense, falls in love with Wenceslas and marries him herself.

Bette vows to take revenge on the Hulot family and joins forces with Valerie Marneffe, her pretty young neighbour. Knowing that Adeline’s husband, the Baron Hulot, is a notorious womaniser and that Valerie is looking for a rich lover, Bette sees a way to ruin the Baron and destroy the rest of the family in the process.

I enjoyed Cousin Bette and I think it was a good choice for my first Balzac novel. I found it surprisingly easy to read and very entertaining, although I did need to concentrate to follow all the intricacies of the plot. The summary I have given above is only the beginning of the story; Bette is by no means the only character who plots and schemes and tries to cause trouble – and in fact, many of the misfortunes that befall members of the Hulot family are caused by their own personal weaknesses and flaws rather than the influence of others. Baron Hulot, for example, despite being one of the targets of Bette and Valerie’s cruelty, really only has himself to blame as he is unable to resist the temptation placed in his way.

I saw the three main female characters – Cousin Bette, Valerie Marneffe and Adeline Hulot – as representing three stereotypical views of 19th century women of different classes and social groups. Bette is the bitter, jealous middle-aged spinster, Valerie the selfish, manipulative beauty, and Adeline the faithful, loving wife who turns a blind eye to her husband’s many affairs. Any reader who is interested in gender roles and the portrayal of women in literature will find a lot to think about in Cousin Bette.

Before reading this novel I had no idea what the outcome of the story would be and I was kept in suspense until the end. Of course, I’m not going to tell you how it ends, but it’s not quite as simple as the ‘good’ characters being rewarded and the ‘bad’ ones being punished. It’s all very melodramatic – and all very bleak as well – but I enjoyed it and am looking forward to reading more Balzac. As he wrote more than one hundred books, I would love to know if you’ve read any of them and which ones you would recommend.

Pure by Andrew Miller

7 Comments

Pure This is another book that I’ve read for my Reading the Walter Scott Prize project and another interesting read – though a very dark one.

The story is set in France in 1785, just a few years before the French Revolution. Jean-Baptiste Baratte, a young engineer from Normandy, has arrived in Paris commissioned with an important but gruesome task – the destruction of the cemetery of Les Innocents. As the oldest and largest cemetery in the city, Les Innocents has now become overcrowded, smelly and unsanitary. To prevent it becoming even more of a health hazard than it already is, Jean-Baptiste has been given the job of destroying the cemetery and its church, emptying the graves and arranging for reburial elsewhere.

The novel is based on historical fact – Les Innocents really did need to be removed in the 18th century in order to purify the surrounding area and a market place was later built on the site of the old cemetery. However, Jean-Baptiste Baratte is fictional and in Pure Andrew Miller imagines what it may have felt like to be the person responsible for carrying out such an unpleasant and controversial task. Everyone has an opinion on the destruction of the cemetery and as Jean-Baptiste continues his work, he learns just how deeply people feel about it.

During his time in Paris, Jean-Baptiste lodges with the Monnards, whose daughter Ziguette is not at all pleased with the removal of the cemetery she has been able to see from her window all her life. On his first inspection of the church, he meets the organist Armand de Saint-Méard, who will lose his job when the building is demolished. In another building on the site live the sexton and his young granddaughter, Jeanne, both of whom have devoted their lives to Les Innocents. And then there are the men – ex-miners from the mines of Valenciennes – summoned to Paris by Jean-Baptiste to help with the excavations of the graves. All of these people are affected in some way by what is happening and Jean-Baptiste receives both support and opposition.

I enjoyed the first half of this book which deals with Jean-Baptiste’s first days in Paris, getting to know the people in and around the cemetery, and deciding how to proceed with the job he has been given. I loved the portrayal of a young man experiencing life in a big city, so desperate to fit in that he lets his new friends persuade him to exchange his smart brown suit for a pistachio green silk one. France is heading towards Revolution and although this never becomes a big part of the plot, the hints are there in the references towards progress, a group of rebellious young men who call themselves the ‘party of the future’, grafitti daubed on walls, the contrast between the working class and the aristocracy – and a doctor called Guillotin who arrives at the cemetery to study the skeletons.

I’m not sure what went wrong with the second half of the book, but I started to lose interest at the point when the miners arrived in Paris and work on the cemetery began. I had found it interesting to read about the preparations, the inspections that had to be made and what the work would involve, but the descriptions of the actual excavations started to feel repetitive. I was also hoping for more character development, but apart from Jean-Baptiste himself the other characters have very little depth. Two of them commit acts of violence towards the end of the book, yet I didn’t feel that their motivations were fully explored and the consequences of both actions seemed to be resolved too quickly.

Pure is a fascinating novel, especially if you’re interested in historical fiction set in pre-Revolutionary France. I really liked Andrew Miller’s style of writing, but my lack of emotional engagement with the characters and the other problems I’ve mentioned above left me feeling slightly disappointed at the end.

The Sea Garden by Deborah Lawrenson

4 Comments

The Sea Garden I remember hearing a lot about Deborah Lawrenson’s The Lantern a few years ago but never found time to read it, so I was pleased to have the opportunity to read her latest book, The Sea Garden. This book consists of not just one story, but three, each taking up approximately one third of the book and introducing us to three very different women. The stories are loosely connected but each has a different setting and a different feel.

The first of the three stories (you could probably call them novellas) is also titled The Sea Garden. It’s 2013 and Ellie Brooke, a landscape garden designer, is visiting Porquerolles, a small island off the coast of France where she has agreed to restore a memorial garden for a client, Laurent de Fayols. However, she is unprepared for both the hostile welcome she receives from Laurent’s elderly mother and for the supernatural experiences that happen to her while on the island. Ellie’s story then comes to an abrupt end and another begins…

The Lavender Field takes us back to Nazi-occupied France in 1944 and a small community of people working for the French Resistance. Marthe Lincel, a young blind woman, is an apprentice at the Distillerie Musset in Provence. Her work involves creating fragrances and perfumed soaps, but as the war progresses she turns her skills to helping Allied soldiers. There are the beginnings of a dramatic and romantic wartime story here, but again we come to the end too soon…

The third and final story is A Shadow Life, the story of Iris Nightingale, who is working for British Intelligence in 1943, gathering information and recruiting spies to be sent into occupied France. Iris grows close to one of the agents, Xavier Descours, but his work is secretive and dangerous and this is not a good time to be falling in love. As the book draws near to its conclusion, we finally begin to see some connections between Ellie, Marthe and Iris and the men in their lives.

This is a beautifully written book, set in a time period I love to read about (World War II). There are some lovely descriptions of Provence with its lavender fields and also of the island of Porquerolles, a place I previously knew nothing about. The Porquerolles story has some ghostly/supernatural elements and I was impressed with the way the author creates such an eerie atmosphere in what should be a peaceful, idyllic setting. I also enjoyed learning about the work Iris carries out for the SOE (Special Operations Executive); it was fascinating to see the level of secrecy that was required when going undercover in France!

My problem with this book was the structure. Keeping the three stories separate just didn’t work for me as well as a more traditional multiple time period novel would have done. While there were definitely some links between the three, most of these didn’t become obvious until very near the end of the book. When things did start to come together the result was fascinating, but it happened too late and I’m sure I would have been happier if the three stories had been woven together from the beginning to form one cohesive novel.

Marthe’s section in particular felt very disconnected from the other two – yes, there was some character overlap, but I’m not convinced that such a large chunk of the book needed to be devoted to Marthe’s story. The third story – the one with Iris and the secret agents – was the one I found most compelling, possibly because it’s the only one that felt like a complete story and brought in elements from the other two. At the end, though, there were still some questions left unanswered and if I had enjoyed the book more, I would have taken the time to go back and search the earlier sections to see if there were any clues I had missed.

I received a copy of The Sea Garden for review via NetGalley

The Brethren by Robert Merle

6 Comments

The Brethren How could I resist a book that has been compared to both Alexandre Dumas and Dorothy Dunnett’s Lymond Chronicles? The Brethren is the first in Robert Merle’s thirteen-volume series, Fortunes of France, and sounded exactly like the sort of book I usually love! I was surprised to find that, despite being hugely successful in France when it was originally published between 1977 and 2003, the series is only now being made available in an English translation for the first time by Pushkin Press.

This first instalment introduces us to the de Siorac family and is set in the 16th century during the French Wars of Religion, a period of conflict between the Catholics and the Huguenots (Protestants). Our narrator is Pierre, the young son of Jean de Siorac, a former soldier who retires to the castle of Mespech in the Périgord region of France and establishes a small Huguenot community there with the help of his friend, Jean de Sauveterre. The two Jeans are such close friends that they formally adopt each other as brothers, becoming the ‘brethren’ of the title, but while they are united in their religious beliefs, they have very different personalities!

The adventures that follow are remembered by an older Pierre, looking back on his life. He tells us of the time the château of Mespech was attacked by a band of gypsies and of an attempt to rescue the family’s former maid from a plague-stricken town, as well as the more mundane tasks of haymaking and harvesting. We also get to know the other members of the household, from Pierre’s Catholic mother (whose refusal to convert is a source of discord within the family) and his wet-nurse’s mischievous daughter, Little Helix, to the superstitious cook, La Maligou, and the three veteran soldiers who have been with the two Jeans since their earliest military campaigns. Most of all, though, we follow the religious struggles taking place between Catholic and Huguenot, both within the walls of Mespech and throughout the whole of France.

I found The Brethren an enjoyable book, although it was not exactly what I had expected. It lacked the humour and flair of Dumas’ novels and the characters didn’t come to life the way Dunnett’s do, but I did still find plenty of things to love. The portrait of 16th century France is vivid and fascinating and I learned a lot about the religious wars, which I’ve never read about in so much detail before.

After finishing the book I was interested to discover that Robert Merle had written the originals using a form of 16th century French. The English edition, you may be relieved to hear, is not written in anything resembling 16th century English, but it does not really seem like an entirely modern translation either. This wasn’t a problem for me, as I do like books to have an old-fashioned feel, especially when I’m reading historical fiction. However, the writing does become quite dry in places and there’s not as much action as I would have hoped for, with a lot of time spent on discussions of religious treaties and detailed descriptions of battle strategies.

As Pierre is a young child throughout most of this novel and still only fifteen, I think, at the end, many of the things he tells us about are things he has not actually witnessed or taken part in personally. Instead, he gives us second-hand accounts of his father’s adventures, often drawing on Jean de Siorac’s journal, the Book of Reason. This has the effect of creating a distance between Pierre and the reader so that I found his narration slightly detached at times. But although Pierre didn’t pull me into the story as quickly as I would have liked, I did eventually become completely absorbed in the lives of the de Siorac family. I’m already looking forward to the second book and I hope Pushkin Press will continue to publish the rest of the series.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher for review.

The Hunchback of Notre-Dame by Victor Hugo

17 Comments

The Hunchback of Notre-Dame Or Notre-Dame de Paris, to give it its original French title and one which is much more appropriate. Quasimodo, the hunchback, has a surprisingly small role in the book while the cathedral of Notre-Dame itself is at the heart of the story, with most of the action taking place within its walls, on top of its towers or in the streets and squares below.

Set in 15th century Paris, the novel follows the stories of three tragic and lonely people. First there’s the beautiful gypsy dancer, La Esmeralda, who captivates everyone she meets with her looks, her dancing and her magic tricks. Alone in the world with only her goat, Djali, for company, she dreams of one day being reunited with her parents. Then there’s Claude Frollo, the Archdeacon, once a good and compassionate man who rescued Quasimodo as a child and raised him as his son. He becomes obsessed with Esmeralda after seeing her dancing in the Place de Grève and descends into a life dominated by lust and envy, turning away from the church and towards black magic. Finally, of course, there’s Quasimodo himself, the bell-ringer of Notre-Dame. Outwardly deformed and ugly, his kind heart and his love for Esmeralda lead him into conflict with his adoptive father, Frollo.

I read Hugo’s Les Miserables almost exactly five years ago and I really don’t know why it has taken me so long to read another of his books. I loved Les Miserables and I loved this one too, though not quite as much; this is a shorter and slightly easier read, but I didn’t find the story as powerful or emotional. It was a good choice for the R.I.P. challenge, though – the atmosphere is very dark and there are plenty of Gothic elements.

At least having had some previous experience of Hugo meant that I knew what to expect from his writing! You need to be prepared for some long diversions and chapter after chapter that has almost nothing to do with the plot or the main characters. Hugo devotes a lot of this novel to discussing Gothic architecture, the structure of the cathedral, the geographical layout of Paris and other topics which may or may not be of interest to the reader. I’m happy to admit that I didn’t read every single word of these sections (in fact, I skipped most of the chapter entitled A Bird’s-Eye View of Paris) and I don’t feel that I missed anything as a result.

The version of the book that I read is not actually the one pictured above (I just wanted a book cover to illustrate my post). I downloaded the free version from Project Gutenberg for my Kindle, which is Isabel F. Hapgood’s 1888 translation. I was very happy with it, but I’m used to reading older books and older translations; depending on your taste you might prefer a more modern translation. And just as a side note, does anyone else love books with imaginative chapter titles? There are some great ones here, including The Inconveniences of Following a Pretty Woman through the Streets in an Evening, The Effect which Seven Oaths in the Open Air Can Produce and The Danger of Confiding One’s Secret to a Goat. Much more intriguing than just numbering them 1, 2, 3!

As I’ve now read Hugo’s two most popular books, can anyone tell me if there are any others that I should read? I like the sound of Ninety-Three and The Man Who Laughs, but are they worth reading?