Book Review
Jul. 3rd, 2010 07:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shapinglightI said I was going to try and write reviews of the books I've read. Since I barely read anything these days, there won't be many, and they'll probably be pretty crap, as it's years since I've tried anything like this. But perhaps I'll get better as I go along?
First up, The Knowledge of Water by Sarah Smith, which![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
brutti_ma_buoni had mentioned in one of her posts, and which sounded interesting enough to me that I decided to buy and read it.
Spoilers for the book
This novel is the sequel to another, The Vanished Child, which I've been unable to get hold of. I think that now I've read The Knowledge of Water, I won't bother trying. This is not because I didn't like the book - I did - it's because I don't feel I need to know any more about how the characters got to where they are in it.
The novel is set in Paris in 1910 and features a large cast of characters, including one based on the French writer Colette. The two main characters are a French aristocrat, the Baron de Reisden, who is not quite what he seems - or is he? the book leaves it obscure, though probably the prequel explained it all - and Perdita Halley, an American girl who is studying the piano at the Paris Conservatoire, and finding the experience quite frustrating. She is also so near-sighted that she is nearly blind.
Previous to the beginning of the book, the Baron de Reisden - Alexander - had proposed to her and she had refused him because she wanted to concentrate on her musical career, but she is very discouraged by the patronising way she is being taught - only allowed to play certain pieces, because others are 'not suitable' for women to learn - and wondering if she has done the right thing in turning down the proposal, since she is still in love with Alexander.
Perdita's frustrations at not being taken seriously as an artiste because she's a woman ties into one of the other major strands of the novel - the mystery surrounding a painting belonging to Alexander's aristocratic cousin, the Viscountess de Gresniere, known as Dotty. The provenance of the painting, a work by an Impressionist master called Mallais, becomes a matter of crucial importance during the course of the book, not only to Dotty, who fears she has been sold a 'dud', but to Perdita, for reasons that I won't spoiler but that have to do with her own yearning to be acknowledged as a serious artist, despite her sex.
A third, and in my opinion less successful strand of the novel concerns a murdered prostitute, a deranged guard at the Louvre who has a grudge against the Baron de Reisden, and an attempt to steal the Mona Lisa and throw it into the Seine as a protest against stuffy, old-fashioned artistic standards on the part of a group of rather unlikeable modern artists and writers, of which the Colette-based character, Milly Xico, is one.
All this is set against the background of the great Parisian flood of 1910, which I had never even heard of before.
Generally, I enjoyed the book a great deal. The period detail and scene-setting are superb and the prose is limpid and graceful. I also found Perdita a very engaging heroine and it was interesting to contrast her with the brittle and conventional Dotty. I was not so convinced by Alexander de Reisden, who I found rather bland and unsympathetic, though his interaction with Daugherty - a rather 'down home' American character sent by Perdita's family to keep an eye on the couple - is interesting. Milly Xico is also lots of fun. However, I did feel that there was possibly a little too much going on, and the book had enough to keep a reader's interest - with the flood, and the stuff about painting and Perdita's trials and tribulations as she tries to be true to herself and at the same time conform to society's norms - without the murder and the Mona Lisa plot.
So, main strengths as listed above, main weaknesses an overly busy plot and a hero who seems a little hollow and unsatisfying.
I would recommend it, though. Enjoyed it a great deal.
Hmm, just re-read that. It really is a rather crap review. Will have to practice.
First up, The Knowledge of Water by Sarah Smith, which
brutti_ma_buoni had mentioned in one of her posts, and which sounded interesting enough to me that I decided to buy and read it.Spoilers for the book
This novel is the sequel to another, The Vanished Child, which I've been unable to get hold of. I think that now I've read The Knowledge of Water, I won't bother trying. This is not because I didn't like the book - I did - it's because I don't feel I need to know any more about how the characters got to where they are in it.
The novel is set in Paris in 1910 and features a large cast of characters, including one based on the French writer Colette. The two main characters are a French aristocrat, the Baron de Reisden, who is not quite what he seems - or is he? the book leaves it obscure, though probably the prequel explained it all - and Perdita Halley, an American girl who is studying the piano at the Paris Conservatoire, and finding the experience quite frustrating. She is also so near-sighted that she is nearly blind.
Previous to the beginning of the book, the Baron de Reisden - Alexander - had proposed to her and she had refused him because she wanted to concentrate on her musical career, but she is very discouraged by the patronising way she is being taught - only allowed to play certain pieces, because others are 'not suitable' for women to learn - and wondering if she has done the right thing in turning down the proposal, since she is still in love with Alexander.
Perdita's frustrations at not being taken seriously as an artiste because she's a woman ties into one of the other major strands of the novel - the mystery surrounding a painting belonging to Alexander's aristocratic cousin, the Viscountess de Gresniere, known as Dotty. The provenance of the painting, a work by an Impressionist master called Mallais, becomes a matter of crucial importance during the course of the book, not only to Dotty, who fears she has been sold a 'dud', but to Perdita, for reasons that I won't spoiler but that have to do with her own yearning to be acknowledged as a serious artist, despite her sex.
A third, and in my opinion less successful strand of the novel concerns a murdered prostitute, a deranged guard at the Louvre who has a grudge against the Baron de Reisden, and an attempt to steal the Mona Lisa and throw it into the Seine as a protest against stuffy, old-fashioned artistic standards on the part of a group of rather unlikeable modern artists and writers, of which the Colette-based character, Milly Xico, is one.
All this is set against the background of the great Parisian flood of 1910, which I had never even heard of before.
Generally, I enjoyed the book a great deal. The period detail and scene-setting are superb and the prose is limpid and graceful. I also found Perdita a very engaging heroine and it was interesting to contrast her with the brittle and conventional Dotty. I was not so convinced by Alexander de Reisden, who I found rather bland and unsympathetic, though his interaction with Daugherty - a rather 'down home' American character sent by Perdita's family to keep an eye on the couple - is interesting. Milly Xico is also lots of fun. However, I did feel that there was possibly a little too much going on, and the book had enough to keep a reader's interest - with the flood, and the stuff about painting and Perdita's trials and tribulations as she tries to be true to herself and at the same time conform to society's norms - without the murder and the Mona Lisa plot.
So, main strengths as listed above, main weaknesses an overly busy plot and a hero who seems a little hollow and unsatisfying.
I would recommend it, though. Enjoyed it a great deal.
Hmm, just re-read that. It really is a rather crap review. Will have to practice.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-07-03 09:23 pm (UTC)The Vanished Child is a lot simpler and more stripped down; less fascinating, but clearer. The third book, A Citizen of the Country, is in some ways the most successful of the three, in that it is complex but quite unified and her taste for grotesques and spectacle is part of the main plot.
But it was the depiction of the floods that absolutely hypnotised me, which is probably why I wrote about it - can't remember whenever it was I mentioned it, but I'm glad it was worth the rec.
Book talk is always fun!
no subject
Date: 2010-07-04 09:21 am (UTC)the whole art theft mess is shoehorned in for kicks, frankly.
Yes, I agree. Its links to the possible art fraud plot are tenuous at best. Still, Milly does make an interesting foil for Perdita, being so jaded and cynical.
I do have A Citizen of the Country and shall read it, but it'll be more to find out what happens to Perdita than because I have any real interest in De Reisden.
Thanks for the rec, though. I'm glad to have read it because its evocation of a time, place and way of thinking that seems very outmoded to us now is so well done.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-03 09:55 pm (UTC)Thanks for the review and reminding me of a book that I did enjoy while reading it, but don't remember very well now.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-04 09:24 am (UTC)I don't know quite what it was about Alexander that I didn't like. He's a nice enough young man - thoughtful and kind etc. The character seemed to lack bite somehow, though, and his connection with the Paris police and to the murder just seemed very contrived.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-05 11:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-08 01:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-06 12:31 am (UTC)It certainly sounds like it. Is it a particularly long book?
no subject
Date: 2010-07-08 01:50 pm (UTC)The book is about 460 pages, so it's pretty lengthy.