The Romantic Armchair Traveller

France: Liszt’s Kiss by Susanne Dunlap

 

French Romanticism reached its zenith in the 1830s, an era of political revolutions and artistic re-invention. In Liszt’s Kiss by Susanne Dunlap a handful of the luminaries of that age mingle with fictional protagonists in a story of infatuation and deception in the shadow of the catastrophic cholera outbreak in Paris in the spring of 1832. A novel dressed as historical fiction with a dash of mystery, its immature and self-centred principal character frequently derails an already precarious plot into a narrative style reminiscent of Young Adult romance. Although sections that demonstrate the effects of music on the characters’ emotions contain a scene that held me spellbound, such psychological insight is not carried over to the larger story, which too often is flattened by the author limply telling the reader what characters are feeling. In the final analysis the book’s greatest mystery, to me, is how a setting so charged with dramatic opportunity can be rendered so pointless.

 

1832. When the cholera pandemic reaches Paris and sweeps away the life of her mother among its thousands of victims, seventeen year-old noblewoman Anne de Barbier-Chouant’s former courtier father locks the room in which the family piano stands and forbids Anne from practicing her music. Already locked out from his affections, Anne gratefully seizes the friendship extended by her mother’s friend, the Comtesse Marie d’Agoult, a music lover and hostess of famous salons. When the Comtesse arranges to secretly have young Hungarian virtuoso Franz Liszt become Anne’s piano teacher, the girl’s romantic imagination soars. She barely notices medical student Pierre Talon, thinking of him only as the saviour of her cousin Armand’s life.

To Pierre, however, Anne is a vision of loveliness he cannot forget as he toils day and night in the overflowing cholera wards of the Hôtel-Dieu. So when the Comtesse d’Agoult asks him for an unusual and dangerous favour for the sake of her protégée he complies, hoping it will help clear up the mystery surrounding Anne’s home and family life. For while the formerly splendid mansion is crumbling into poverty, misery, and oblivion under the despotic rule of Anne’s bitter and taciturn father, the marquis, it begins to appear as if the very lives of those who inhabit the mansion are threatened by its secrets.

 

If one is looking for a sentimental romantic drama breathlessly played out against a piquant historical background, Liszt’s Kiss may very well satisfy and indeed thrill. I have read my share and often enjoyed them, and as the name of my blog shows I have yet to tire of romantic themes. But I picked up this novel based on its claim to be “a rich evocation of a remarkable period as seen through the eyes of a sensitive young artist”, a story set “at the height of the Romantic era in Paris...with the ominous presence of Paris’s most deadly epidemic looming over every turbulent event” (back cover blurb). I hoped that the author’s past as a pianist would bring a unique dimension to her treatment of the artistic psyche and interpretation of a fascinating artistic climate. On these points the novel failed dismally to convince or compel.

 

If a story turns out to have compensations, disappointed expectations are not necessarily cause for lasting discontent. In this case, I perceived that Susanne Dunlap has plenty of raw talent that bodes well for her growth into a popular storyteller. One of her most obvious strengths is the ability to develop a complex yet neatly designed mystery plot that even far-fetched motivations and character naïvetés did not ruin for me. And when she takes her characters out of their heads and propels them into physical action she often does so with verve and a great instinct for relevant and lively detail. Happily, too, her approach to historical authenticity anchors the plot in historical reality, fleshing out the bones of her story with judiciously applied tidbits based on in-depth research. Regrettably, my appreciation and even admiration of these qualities was not enough to make this run-of-the-mill coming-of-age story that has nothing to say about the time it is set in more than periodically enjoyable.

 

When the cholera pandemic reached France in early 1832 it struck a country that was already in turbulence from food shortages and rising costs due to years of failed harvests and other economic factors. A revolution two years earlier had replaced the newly restored Bourbon monarchy with another, more populist branch which favoured the bourgeoisie and was bitterly resented by republicans and Legitimists (supporters of the Bourbons) alike. Abroad, France fought for an increased share in the colonial onslaughts, and orientalism captured the imaginations of people at home. Artists and intellectuals, too, were in transition, breaking the bonds that formerly had defined them as servants of the aristocracy and re-inventing themselves as free entrepreneurs. The Romantics espoused the idea of “art for art’s sake” and saw genius in originality and individuality. It was a period where extraordinary creative vitality, extravagance, and eccentricity mingled with social and political instability and violence. Meanwhile, Paris retained a mediaeval, maze-like, damp and unsanitary town plan in which sewage emptied into open street drains – in other words, perfect conditions for disease, particularly with the onset of warm weather. In the months the cholera ravaged France it claimed 100,000 victims, a fifth of them in Paris, where in April alone 13,000 people perished.

 

This, roughly, is the complex context for the Paris in which Liszt’s Kiss is set but of which the story gives only a threadbare hint. For example, the Marquis de Barbier-Chouant, Anne’s father and a Bourbon courtier, is out of favour with the new monarchy. That is literally all we learn of the political situation. When the story concludes we are in June 1832, but despite the prominence in the novel of a protagonist who is a medical student, there is not one word about the student-led uprising in Paris in the first week of June that attempted to overturn the government.

 

Doctor-to-be Pierre volunteers in a hospital and through him we see the what cholera looks like and the helplessness of a medical community that had no idea of the cause, cure for, or prevention of the disease. In the Reading Group Guide at the back of my edition (Touchstone trade paperback, 2007) it is stated that “love and death are major themes in Liszt’s Kiss”. It is true that the (off-page) death of Anne’s mother from cholera sets the story in motion, that the mystery thread involves the possibility of impending murder, and that sensitive readers may flinch at the descriptions of the cholera wards. Yet the storyline more often seems to exploit cholera as a spicy background instead of a running foreground commentary on society or death. It is correct that people continued to attend parties and charity concerts, but Parisians also left their city and country in droves – apparently, 120,000 passports were issued at the town hall. In Liszt’s Kiss, not one character cowers in their house, afraid of being infected through contact with strangers. On the contrary, less than a week after her mother’s death, Anne pouts about being shut up in the house and runs off to a concert. She goes for walks and drives during which we neither hear of nor see the epidemic. It is explained that the poor suspect they are being poisoned, for it is mainly the lower classes who are affected, and the characters discuss newspaper articles which describe mob violence against scapegoats. The characters themselves, however, never experience any of this frantic atmosphere of panic and paranoia and so for this reader “cholera” became an abstract concept that was paraded for emotional effect when the plot made it convenient but otherwise ignored.

 

But the biggest problem, to me, is the way the novel takes one of the most famous Romantics and one of the most infamous affairs of the period and reduces them to a vehicle for giving a teenager cause for puppy love angst. There is nothing wrong with choosing a narrow scope for a story – for example, the romance genre specialises in tight focus on the developing emotional relationship of a couple. But in order to give such a story substance, it is, I think, generally a good idea to delve into the chosen themes with all the more intensity and depth. The central obsession of the principal characters in Liszt’s Kiss is “love” or more accurately, infatuation and lust. The exploration of it, however, is as superficial, cool, and vague as a reflection in a foxed mirror. Likewise, we learn nothing about what the Romantics stood for, what they wanted to convey with their art, why the movement flourished at this time – even though Dunlap blends several famous names into her story: writers de Musset and Heine, painter Delacroix, musicians Liszt and Chopin, salonnière d’Agoult. These are artists and intellectuals who revolutionised the concept of art and created, debated, loved, and fought their way into the Western cultural canon. What does Dunlap have to say about them? That Liszt was able to write down other composers’ music scores from memory, that Chopin played so quietly that audiences had to strain their ears, that Musset had a flirty way with words, that Heine wrote down his impressions of the cholera-ravaged city, that Delacroix smoked opium, and that d’Agoult’s jealousies got the better of her sense of compassion. Oh, and how a pianist places her hands on the keys. Nice trivia, but far from “a rich evocation of a remarkable period”.

 

While the author has obviously conducted serious research into the aspects necessary for her mystery plot, her grasp of general details is less sure – and historical fiction purists should note that to accommodate her story, Dunlap has moved the first meeting and subsequent affair of Franz Liszt and Marie d’Agoult from 1833 to 1832. Carriage terminology (broughams, chariots) is off, as is attire (Anne wears hoop skirts), proper address, French etiquette including mourning etiquette, and the age at which French parents were legally able to interfere with any marriage contracted by their children. Things that raised my eyebrows include this statement: “Anne had not been in company enough to understand the subtleties of etiquette and propriety” (41). She is the daughter of a marquis, has been raised for seventeen years by a courtier father and a mother who hostesses brilliant parties and dinners, yet neither parent has instructed her in basics that every child of the nobility would have been expected to know in order not to disgrace their family? Am I to understand that, prior to the misfortunes that hit her family, she never once was introduced to a single adult acquaintance and that she failed to absorb common customs and courtesies? Apparently. As mentioned above, she attends a theatre concert within a week of her mother’s death, not even in a discreet fashion but sitting in a private box with a well-known society hostess. Then, “almost a month” later she has set off mourning and dresses for a party in “a pearl grey satin evening gown” (73). If I recall correctly, in nineteenth-century France a mother’s death called for six months of mourning, the first three in deep mourning.

 

In fact, Anne was in almost every respect a problematic character for me. With the exception of a promising start, whenever the story was told from her point of view my credulity and patience dropped several notches. Seventeen years old, she admittedly has an excuse for behaving like a hormonal teenager, but her shallowness and lack of empathy or concern for others prevented me from seeing her as the wounded character the author intended (according to the interview at the back of the book). Moreover, Anne was not the only protagonist who lost my sympathy. Their various hair-raising thoughts (179, 190) and self-serving actions left me with increased feelings of distaste and disgust for this bunch of dizzyingly callous, silly, and thin characters. I am afraid I began to see Liszt’s Kiss as a comedy of misunderstandings and deceptions that mistakes itself for grand drama, one that treats the emotional travails of its characters with such lack of insight that any chance for genuine pathos slithers into melodrama.

 

Purely for the energy, warmth, and enthusiasm he brings to the often anemic tone of the story, Franz Liszt (Liszt Ferenc(z)) was one of the saving graces of the novel for me. Twenty-one years of age, a brilliant piano player whose genius is yet to be fully discovered, the physical description of him as imposingly tall, handsome, and golden-blond reminded me more of Julian Sands’s interpretation of Liszt in the film Impromptu than of the portraits. Despite his prominence in the story Dunlap’s version of him does not extend to a multi-dimensional portrayal, but she succeeds in sketching an impassioned, reckless, and inspiring nature that makes the other characters seem pale and lifeless by comparison. In a superb scene (which I assume gave the idea for the novel’s title), Liszt is guiding Anne through an E-major study by Chopin. Had the rest of the book been written with the same power and imagination, Liszt’s Kiss would have earned a very different write-up from me. It gave me goose-flesh. I almost forgave the ludicrous plot contrivances to make Anne believe he is in love with her, which make him seem absurdly dense and irrational.

 

One of the virtues of the novel is that it pulls out Marie d’Agoult from the sidelines of history. In the interview section of the book the author says that she “didn’t want to write a fictionalized treatment” of Liszt and d’Agoult’s affair. In inventing her own version of the beginnings of their mutual attraction she does exactly that, however. Tired of Anne, I rather welcomed it. The future couple’s scenes together are on a different narrative plane from those involving Anne, and benefit from the nuances of their more mature characters. D’Agoult was an eminent salonnière who went on to create a career for herself as a reviewer and journalist, authored a remarkable history of the 1848 Revolution as well as a roman-à-clef, and familiarised French audiences with many foreign intellectuals. I thought it a pity, therefore, that Dunlap’s Marie shows no indication of the influential personage she was to become. In Liszt’s Kiss the picture of her as a salon hostess consists of directing servants regarding food and determining the order of appearance of the performers she has invited. Her intelligence, involvement in social issues, and political acumen find no place in the novel since her sole preoccupation is with her forbidden attraction for Liszt (at twenty-eight, she is married with two children). Aurore Dudevant, who in 1832 adopted her famous literary pseudonym, George Sand, does not make an appearance in the book, but Marie d’Agoult’s alleged jealousy and spitefulness against Sand have definitely left a mark on Dunlap’s in other respects compassionate portrayal of the Comtesse.

 

I suspect Pierre Talon is meant to embody the Romantic soul. I thought him a sympathetic character but distressingly naive. He falls head over heels in love with Anne at first glance and it seems there is nothing he would not do for her, including burglary and theft, simply because a stranger tells him this is necessary in order to safeguard Anne who, of course, must not know about it. Since until the end of the novel the pair do not conduct a single private conversation about anything personal I am relieved to report that I liked the way the author resolved the question of how to give their non-relationship a romantic yet believable ending. (No, that is not a plot spoiler unless I have failed to make it clear that I categorise Liszt’s Kiss as romance-y fiction, not literary fiction. In that case, I apologise.) I cannot say the same for the preposterous machinations of other characters to force a different outcome.

 

Dunlap’s prose flows smoothly but if the language is meant to evoke the mood and style of the Romantics, it did not work for me. Some of the character descriptions and phrases may well have been borrowed from actual, surviving correspondence, but expressions that perhaps sounded lyrical back then are today clichés that will only work if the context in which they are used has been carefully framed. “Her presence had been overpoweringly seductive, her eyes deep wells of mystery, tantalizingly liquid, maddeningly obscure” (84) is the kind of purple-tinged prose that detractors of old-style romances enjoy ridiculing. The romantic content displays a similar hue. The first time Anne (“unconscious of her own beauty”) sees Liszt and hears him play the sensations she experiences are suggestive of a girl abandoning herself to sexual ecstasy with a skilled lover, at the climax of which we read, “When his face turned fully in their direction and she thought she saw the smallest glimmer of a smile on it, Anne fainted” (38). Pierre is present and realises she has fainted. The reaction of this medical student is as follows: “the intensity of her response to the performance, her unself-conscious abandonment to the music, convinced him she might be in actual peril” (39). The last time I encountered anything similar in a genre romance was a 1970s Barbara Cartland book I read in my teens. (For anyone wondering, I examined the cover of Liszt’s Kiss. At the top of the back cover the word “fiction”, not “romance” or "young adult", is printed in faint capitals.) An unrelated irritation concerning technique was the author’s habit of repeating parts of the same scene from another character’s viewpoint. To me it added nothing and merely read as lazy writing.

 

In terms of general readability, I thought the novel improved considerably around the 100-page mark. The plot gains momentum as it progresses, and in the second half is often involving. When the mystery thread – which in the beginning consists mostly of Anne’s father scowling and being uncommunicative – moves to the foreground and involves the Office of Records and commissioner Gardive, I began to cheer up. Here is a character who could be developed into the hero of an interesting mystery series. He is sharp, smart, unsentimental, and unexpected, with an unusual job that promises plenty of opportunity for nosing out secrets and surprises. Team him up with Eugène Delacroix, a minor but amiable foil for Liszt in the novel, and Dunlap would have the makings of a Romantic-era historical novel I might actually relish. A few loose ends are left dangling at the end of Liszt’s Kiss, two involving Armand, Anne’s cousin, and as I have indicated before, many of the character actions and motivations are utterly nonsensical, yet overall I think Dunlap writes a much more dynamic mystery than romantic drama.

 

In summary, Liszt’s Kiss seemed to promise a lot more than it delivered. It is romantic, light historical fiction that offers nothing new, fresh, or insightful to a reader remotely familiar with the French Romantics. It wobbles awkwardly between YA fiction and adult fiction, and confuses sentimentality with emotion. Even so, there are alluring elements that persuade me Susanne Dunlap will be capable of more interesting work when she truly finds her style. This is her first novel for adults, although she has written several books for young adults. Based on Liszt's Kiss, her voice does seem more suited to a younger audience. Still, instead of writing her off as a not-for-me author, I am going to wait and see what happens when her next novel for adults comes out.

 

Books of related interest: Marie d’Agoult’s novel Nélida is said (I have not yet read it) to be a thinly disguised memoir of her relationship with Franz Liszt. French Salons: High Society And Political Sociability from the Old Regime to the Revolution of 1848 by Steven Kale has a self-explanatory title; it is academic and dry but informative. For a novel that explores the effect on the French populace of the 1832 cholera epidemic in much more complex fashion, see Jean Giono’s The Horseman On The Roof (Le Hussard Sur Le Toit), set in Provence. For biographies of d’Agoult and Liszt, Dunlap’s suggested reading list includes Alan Walker’s Franz Liszt: The Virtuoso Years and The Life Of Marie d’Agoult, alias Daniel Stern by Phyllis Stock-Morton.

 

Films of related interest: One of the best-known films about the Romantics is Impromptu, which paints Marie d’Agoult as petty, insecure, and insignificant. Still, it is a witty comedy I always enjoy very much, especially for Judy Davis’s humorous but unexpectedly touching portrayal of George Sand and her pursuit of Chopin (a very young Hugh Grant). In the passionately emotional and sensual The Children Of The Century (Les Enfants Du Siècle) by Diane Kurys, Juliette Binoche gives a more independent, more intense interpretation of Sand, this time through the author’s stormy relationship with Alfred de Musset (the poet who appears a few times in Liszt’s Kiss). A Song To Remember is Chopin à la 1940s Hollywood – an amusing, romanticised, glittering Technicolor production with a huffy Kalkbrenner, a gracious but forgettable Liszt (Stephen Bekassy), and an unrecognisable Sand (Merle Oberon), poised, elegant, and destructively seductive; Marie d’Agoult is nowhere to be found, alas. Jean-Paul Rappeneau’s adaptation of Giono’s novel (above), also titled The Horseman On The Roof, is a swashbuckling French adventure-romance that pairs Binoche and Olivier Martinez as a married noblewoman and a gallant Italian exile who join forces to break through quarantine barriers and escape the 1832 cholera epidemic. It is one of my favourite films.

 

This is my third entry in the Historical Fiction Challenge.

 

France: The Devil’s Door by Sharan Newman

Set in twelfth-century France, The Devil’s Door by Sharan Newman is the second installment in the historical mystery series featuring Catherine LeVendeur, one-time novice at the Paraclete, the monastery founded by Peter Abelard and now ruled over by the learned Abbess Heloise. While the plot is hobbled by somnolent pacing and convoluted by artificial twists and turns that draw out the mystery far longer than its simplicity warrants, the mindset of the characters and the intellectual and religious moorings of the setting are strongly enriched by the author’s doctoral background in mediaeval studies. Another feature which makes this series particularly noteworthy is that mediaeval Jewish society is brought out of the shadows it usually is relegated to in mainstream historical fiction: the perspective is fresh, multi-layered, and inclusive.

 

A missing noblewoman is found fatally beaten and brought to the Paraclete for succour. But when she takes the veil before she dies, donating a piece of forest land to the convent, her outraged relatives accuse Abbess Heloise and her fellow nuns of conspiracy. Grief is in short supply as the seemingly worthless plot of land suddenly attracts interest from near and far.

Only convent boarder Catherine LeVendeur, daughter of a Parisian wine merchant, questions the general assumption that the assailant was a jealous neighbouring landowner, now fled. Her determination to ferret out the truth meets with resistance on all sides and conflicts with the promise of marriage made between her and Edgar of Wedderlie, the young Scottish nobleman for whose love she has decided to refrain from taking monastic vows.

Edgar is not about to have Catherine cantering alone across Champagne in her quest to aid Abbess Heloise and discover the real killer. But even he does not foresee quite how prone Catherine is to ending up in the midst of murderous trouble.

 

Series adherents sometimes wonder why someone would pick any other book than the first in familiarising themselves with a new series. In my case, the closure standalone stories bring contributes to a satisfaction I seldom find in novels with plot threads that develop over several books. Since I am not fond of being bound to a series for its own sake, I select as my introductory sample the installment with a storyline, setting, and characters that intrigue most in order to use the book as an indicator of whether the series will carry enough appeal to justify a bigger investment. Cliffhanger endings, unresolved major plotlines, and character relationships that can only be deciphered by reading previous entries cause quick rejection even when the rest pleases.

The Devil’s Door displays none of these disadvantages, yet when I pulled it out of some rearranged bookshelves earlier this month I was astounded at the pencilled notes which recorded that I had read the book in 1996 (my edition: Forge mass market paperback, 1995). I had not the slightest recollection of the story, nor any inkling of why, with my partiality for things mediaeval and French, I had abandoned or forgotten about the series (10 books now). A week of struggling between admiration and frustration and another to convert the ambivalent experience into a coherent post gave me the answer.

I have striven to avoid spoilers that might ruin the first book, Death Comes As Epiphany, for those who would prefer to start there.

The good first, and there is plenty of it to entertain mystery lovers, historical enthusiasts, and romantics alike. Multiple plot strands combine into a complex tale that transcends genre expectations. The Devil’s Door can of course be read as a straight mystery, but through events both fictional and historical and a multitude of vigorously-drawn characters from every layer of society a simultaneous (and in my opinion more rewarding) examination emerges of mediaeval family, marriage, love, religion, power, and powerlessness.

Newman’s mediaeval France has texture and substance. It is also free of fictional sanitation. Lice is seen in the hair of one character, smiles reveal rotting teeth , and rats scurry in unchanged bed straw. Everyday people regard prejudice and discrimination as their Christian duty, while educated characters scoff at the superstitions of the ignorant even as they themselves harbour beliefs that we smile at today. The precarious existence of those who live on or outside the margins of acceptability is not exploited to showcase the admirable virtues of protagonists with modern values. Although I would have preferred less vague visual descriptions of places such as Paris (map of the town c. 1200), Troyes (map of the twelfth century town) and its palace, where much of the drama takes place, the atmosphere of all locations, including the forest of Othe and the monastic community of the Paraclete, does come adequately alive through the characters that inhabit them.

The cast of characters in The Devil's Door is a dynamic mix of historical and fictional. The former group includes luminaries such as Heloise (Héloïse d’Argenteuil), Peter Abelard, and Bernard of Clairvaux. The one-time lovers, Abelard and Heloise, are described as having matured into commitment to their separate roles in life while continuing to share an unbroken affection for each other. I enjoyed the author’s take on them both: Abbess Heloise as humbly and penitently striving to fulfill God’s will but secretly doubting He listens to her prayers; and Abelard, the aging scholar too harassed by charges of heresy – the developments surrounding the Council of Sens forms one of the subplots – to dwell on their past history but unhesitatingly turning to Heloise for spiritual comfort. Less is known about their son, Astrolabe, but the author turns available material into a sympathetic characterisation of a man caught between the fame of his parents yet tenderly supportive of both. (Even Eleanor of Aquitaine puts in an appearance at Sens – as King Louis’s queen – but the mention is so fleeting that I bring it up only as a piece of trivia for readers who enjoy fictional encounters with her.)

The relationship between Catherine and her teacher, Heloise, derives poignancy from the similarities and differences between their lives and choices. Protective and proud of her charge, Heloise has become a mother figure for the younger woman who, while intensely caring and determined, is impetuous and has not yet fully mastered the discipline to respond rationally. The troubled marriage of her parents, her mother’s illness, and newly revealed family secrets have seared self-doubts into Catherine that are not shaken off by the love she shares with Edgar. Her mind and heart tend to analyse and question everything; she calls these contrary thoughts “her voices”, and they sometimes lead her to fearing that she will one day succumb to the insanity that runs in her family. Although the silliness of her actions toward the end cross deeply into TSTL territory (with the help of equally idiotic decisions made by those who should possess a more mature judgment), I found Catherine an engaging and very appealing character with her physical clumsiness, kind heart, intellectual hunger, and devotion to ensure justice for the wronged.

Despite hints that neither the reader nor Catherine knows everything about Edgar’s Scottish family, his subservient role in the dominant mystery prevents him from developing into something more interesting than an occasionally frustrated companion and eager love interest. But he is a nice foil for Catherine, and together they make a sweet couple.

With so much to praise about this novel, it is time to look at why my reading experience was not more enjoyable. Accuracy in historical fiction is sacrosanct to some readers, and to others, merely an interesting bonus. When the historical record is silent about a person or event, writers, like readers, take different paths in deciding how the missing information should be dealt with. Sharan Newman’s philosophy differs from my preferences, and so, when she takes genuine historical characters about whom virtually nothing is known and invents histories for them that serve her plot purposes, it poses a problem for me. In more than one case I felt the treatment of these characters seriously overstepped reasonable artistic license. It made me crabby, distracting me from the story and steaming me up about the ease with which some authors abuse historical record for the purpose of masking up entirely fictional creations in borrowed authenticity. As Newman’s erudition ensures that judicious portrayals of major historical characters and events intensify an already realistic setting, I cannot acknowledge any need for pretend-historicity. This author possesses all the knowledge and skill required to create believable fictional characters that blend seamlessly into her historical tapestry. History in historical fiction does not become more more legitimate through distortion, however clever.

I wish the prose and pacing in The Devil’s Door had been as competent as the characterisations. Smooth passages are suddenly punctuated by awkward paragraphs and confusing sentence constructions that I sometimes had to re-read until my eyes glazed over, muddled about who exactly was saying or doing what. Moreover, at the beginning of the story quite a few names and pedigrees are tossed about in a manner that repeatedly required me to leaf back and search for some information about who these people were and what their connection was to the subject under discussion.

The acceptance of the mystery and the time it takes for the protagonists to uncover the truth relies heavily on the reader’s willingness to respect, along with the characters, the sanctity of a certain religious practice. I did, but looking back I have to say the premise is an extremely flimsy foundation on which to carry an entire mystery novel. It is perhaps fortunate that the story takes several detours from the mystery. The downside is that although the subplots integrate admirably with the main plotline they inevitably slow down an already gentle pace. I grew impatient with clues and twists that are meted out too infrequently and laboriously to sustain narrative tension, and ended up shrugging at the mystery finale due to its lacklustre handling of what should be a shocking revelation. I also questioned the logic of certain crucial actions and decisions committed by several key characters.

It is obvious that no one can be an expert at everything, although many writers make heroic efforts to eliminate errors and inaccuracies. Even The Devil’s Door is not devoid of one or two cringe-worthy blunders. In one instance, a poor but compassionate hermit is able to casually dispense packets of peppercorns to sufferers who consult him for minor ailments. (Peppercorns were a luxury spice coveted by the wealthy, and worth gold in mediaeval times). More significantly, the central plot point regarding female inheritance gave me considerable pause. I am reluctant to conclude a scholar like Newman got something so basic wrong, but the assumptions the plot makes seem to me to be in conflict with local practice. (See, for example, the Champenois custom of partible inheritance discussed in Theodore Evergates’s The Aristocracy in the County of Champagne, 1100-1300; alternatively see the 1212 statute of Blanche of Navarre, Countess of Champagne, which deals with feudal inheritance by women in Champagne. A translation can be found in Evergates’s Feudal Society In Medieval France: Documents from the County of Champagne.)

Finally, a couple of minor grumbles. The inconsistent naming conventions for French characters irritated me. We have some anglicised names such as Walter and William and Peter, while others follow Old French spellings (Thibault, Mahaut, Jehan, Alys), Latin forms (Gaufridus, Paciana, Johanna), or even, in the case of one noblewoman, something Italianate (Constanza). Similarly, while I enjoyed that the French phrases and epithets occasionally exchanged by the characters are in Old French (“Diex te saut”; “C’est mes acors”; “Avoutre!”), the old lay brother at the Paraclete, a former crusader, rather inconsistently shouts “Montjoie et Saint Denis” instead of “Munioie! Saint-Denys!” (“Montjoie et Saint-Denis” appears to be a modern corruption of the battlecry.)

Although the issues I experienced with The Devil’s Door eventually dampened my enthusiasm (the pacing was the death knell) and I sadly concluded that Sharan Newman’s style is not a stimulating match for me, I do hope other readers are inspired to give the series a try. Reviewing my post I find I have almost persuaded myself to give it a second (third) chance... This is solid historical fiction that belongs on the shelf next to Elizabeth Chadwick and Ellis Peters/Edith Pargeter’s depictions of the twelfth century. I hope I will one day find another mediaeval mystery series that carries its scholarship as gracefully.

 

Books of related interest: Rabbi Solomon bar Isaac or Rashi, who was one of the most important scholars of the Middle Ages, is closely associated with the Jewish community of Troyes, which plays a part in The Devil’s Door. The stories of his daughters, who were famed for their learning and married students of their father, have been novelised by Maggie Anton in four books: Joheved, Rachel, Miriam, and The Secret Scholar. I have not read them but plan to do so now. Among non-fiction, The Jews of Medieval France: The Community of Champagne by Emily Taitz seems particularly relevant. My 1970s edition of The Letters Of Abelard And Heloise, translated by Betty Radice, includes, among other things, seven letters, the Historia Calamitatum, and a 45-page introduction to their lives, works, and legacies. The revised 2004 edition seems to have been slightly expanded. Heloise’s surviving correspondence is also available online, as are, I believe, many of Abelard’s writings. Michael T. Clanchy’s 1999 biography of the latter, Abelard: A Medieval Life, challenges some of the received truths about Abelard and Heloise, asserting that the latter’s contribution to the former's philosophy is much more significant than previously assumed. And finally, The Aristocracy in the County of Champagne, 1100-1300 by Theodore Evergates, provides an analysis of “one of the more vibrant principalities of medieval France“.

 

France: The Making Of A Duchess by Shana Galen

While France is one of my favourite settings the country is rarely featured in romances except as a source of villainy and trauma for regencies. Meredith Duran’s latest historical, Wicked Becomes You, thankfully breaks with tradition but even so both of her protagonists are British. When I found out that The Making Of A Duchess by Shana Galen features a French hero and partially takes place in France, I pounced.

 

1801. Governess Sarah Smith is coerced into into posing as Serafina Artois, the daughter of long-vanished friends of the Harcourts. Her mission is to find evidence that incriminates the French émigré, Julien de Harcourt, Duc de Valère, as a traitor. But just how far does the Foreign Office expect her to take her patriotic loyalties?

Although Julien realises that his frequent trips to France are drawing the attention of the British authorities, he refuses to stop searching for his brothers, missing since the beginning of the Revolution. When Julien discovers that Serafina Artois holds information that may prove of use to his search, he becomes determined to keep her close by his side. Very close.

 

The pretty cover of The Making Of A Duchess shows a couple standing on a rolling lawn, a lofty, French-style château in the distance behind them. The style of the woman’s robin’s egg blue dress indicates a late 18th century time period. Annoyingly, the back blurb does nothing to correct these impressions. The major part of the story is set in London in 1801, and the late-coming French episode (consisting of 51 pages) takes place in the dark, dangerous (and generic) streets of Paris. Since misleading romance covers are commonplace I was not too surprised, but I was disappointed.

The best portion of the book is its gripping, emotional first chapter in which Revolutionaries (a term not used by the author who invariably prefers “peasants”, and who chooses to write only a single sympathetic “lower class” character – a person devoted to nobles) storm and burn the château of the Harcourts, and only Julien and his mother manage to flee. What this opening promised was the book I had hoped to read, but the rest of the story does not come close to living up to its intensity nor its excitement.

Instead, I got the most witless heroine I can remember reading about in years, shallow plotting that requires swallowing implausible scenarios, and inept foreshadowing that effectively gives away the outcome to any plot questions. The flawed technique grated on me throughout the novel. For example, the resolution to a major plot point concerning the heroine’s background, which has been made much of, is related in a flashback. Although the answer had been telegraphed from the start, its revelation would entail significant emotional and social consequences; yet, the matter is treated like an afterthought.

On the positive side, the prose flows smoothly, and there is a genuine sweetness to the overall tone of the book that felt agreeable and soothed me into toleration. As Sarah is a well-meaning character who does shows nascent signs of brain activity toward the end, I managed to live with her insipidity. Julien is good-natured and kind, making him an appealing beta hero, and the pair’s romance is gentle and pleasant. The use of French is generally correct but not always idiomatic. Which reminds me: why is an aristocrat born in France of French parents called Serafina, not Séraphine?

On closing The Making Of A Duchess I found I had little to say. Its predictability induced some eye-rolling, its sweetness some smiles. Although the French flavour all but disappears under the heavy English Regency overlay, I commend Shana Galen for the refreshing choice of making her hero French. Would I pick up the next book in the trilogy? Depends on the Frenchness-factor. For that rare taste in a romance, I might make an effort to focus on the positives. But not before I have leafed through sample pages in a bookshop.

Teaser Tuesday: Blame It On Paris by Laura Florand

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by Miz B of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

 

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• Be careful not to include spoilers! (Make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away. You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title and author, too, so that other Teaser Tuesday participants can add the book to their TBR lists if they like your teasers!

My teaser

From Blame It On Paris by Laura Florand (Tor mass market paperback, 2010), page 204:

“‘I don’t hear you whistling’, he called up. ‘You know, in France, cherry pickers are supposed to whistle to prove they’re not eating all the cherries.’”

Blame It On Paris is so far my favourite funny read of the year. Many laugh-out-loud moments - and some misty-eyed ones - as Florand's memoir chronicles the perils and joys of navigating a cross-cultural, cross-world relationship.

 

Feel free to post a link to your own Tuesday Teaser!