MY THOUGHTS:
I spotted this beautiful book in tip-top condition on an outdoor bargain table of a second hand bookshop along the coast. You bet I jumped on it! I loved Melissa Ashley's first book, based on the life of nature artist Elizabeth Gould. This book looks just as gorgeous on its cover and end notes. The blurb explains how she brings another overshadowed woman from history's annals to light. Shining light on the obscurity of brilliant, forgotten females seems to be Melissa Ashley's mission, and I couldn't wait to get stuck into it. Sadly, compared to The Birdman's Wife, the story itself fell a bit flat for me.
There are three main characters whose points of view we shift between throughout the story.
Marie Catherine d'Aulnoy is (really was!!) one of France's celebrated story tellers, with a string of fairy tale volumes to her name. She holds fashionable literary salons in her household, and has a large following. However, she also suffers from writer's block and gout in her feet, two painful thorns which are getting her down since she's jumped the huge hurdle of being able to separate from her no-good husband and support herself financially with her writing. Her latest campaign is an attempt to save her best friend Nicola from execution.
Nicola Tiquet is an elegant socialite, daughter of a great publishing magnate, and victim of domestic violence. Her abusive husband also keeps her imprisoned in her own room. One day, Nicola is arrested for his attempted murder, although she's truly innocent. The trumped-up conspiracy theory faces her like a brick wall, and she's sentenced for beheading unless her friend Marie Catherine is able to use her influence to help.
Marie Catherine's youngest daughter Angelina was brought up in a convent, but now she's been withdrawn to replace her mother's secretary. Yet although the plan suits her well enough, Angelina nurses resentment toward her mother for leaving her to be brought up by the nuns in the convent for so long. She also has hang-ups about her own life purpose and identity, which she's unable to discuss with anybody until she meets her new friend Alphonse, a talented writer and follower of her mother. Angelina's is very much a story of self-invention and metamorphosis.
Our glimpse into Paris around the turn in the 1700s contains all the right costumes, make-up, transport, food and aromas. The idea of executions being open to general spectators horrifies me. The state and church of the time are shown up as the two bad boys, full of sinister corruption, as Ashley evidently intended. Yet I never felt we were transported entirely to a different time and place, and decided it must be because of the characters.
I think part of the reason it falls short is that the secretiveness integral to the plot is being held by the three main characters whose points of view we share. This defeats the purpose of having point of view characters, if we're not allowed total access into their head spaces. There is always a feeling with all three that something is being held back, keeping us at arm's length. It works fine with secondary characters, but maybe not with such key characters as these three, especially Marie Catherine. If she's going to hold her hands so close to her chest for so long, then we don't really get to know her, or care for her as much as we otherwise might.
The romantic dynamics between the pair who turn out to represent the bee and the orange tree is probably the story's highlight. There are a few surprises woven in, but the mutual attraction between Angelina and her mother's young protege Alphonse kept me turning pages. Whether or not Alphonse was a man of his own time, he's definitely a man of ours. It makes quite an interesting thread, although there's not a great deal of substance to the attraction when I really think about it.
Overall, the winding up of all the loose threads left me saying, 'Well, so much for all that.' Having discovered Baroness Marie Catherine d'Aulnoy in history's hidden pages, Melissa Ashley could have chosen to zoom in on any aspect of her brilliant legacy. Her choice to recreate her as a whiny, limpy lady with a lost mojo and dysfunctional family is a bit puzzling. If we ask ourselves, 'Did anything exceptional really happen in this story?' the answer is no. But it was interesting enough to keep reading, and definitely worth the $5 I paid for it. If I'd bought it at the brand new price of $35 though, I might have felt a bit ripped off.
My favourite line is possibly when Angelina tells her mother, Marie Catherine, 'Imagine I'm a magical mirror. I can reflect your ideas back to you. Help to clarify them even.' What a perfect picture of what an assistant or editor does! In this story of course, Marie Catherine doesn't really find herself in the position to take up her daughter's offer, because she's too stressed about her writer's block. And eventually Angelina withdraws the offer anyway, in favour of striking out on a creative career herself. Still, it's there as a great analogy for anyone who wants to take it on.
I'll look forward to whatever Melissa Ashley writes next. Everyone's entitled to a miss, and this wasn't a terrible one.
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