Books

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

An instant bestseller in the US, quickly translated into many languages (one wonders at what cost to the quirky American humour and cultural references) and reproduced as a television mini-series, this is the debut novel by a former copywriter and creative director which at first made me suspect cynically that it just was a successful exercise in lucrative marketing. I modified this view slightly on reading that Bonnie Garmus was 65 years old when “Lessons in Chemistry” was finally published, having been rejected, it is claimed, some 98 times.

I find it hard to assess this tale of Elizabeth Zott, an ambitious young chemist embarking on a career in the 1950s, when women were expected to be mothers and homemakers, meekly occupy junior supportive roles in the workplace, generally give up their jobs on becoming pregnant, and fired if this happened “out of wedlock”. Perhaps as a result of coming from what sounds like a very dysfunctional family and possibly being somewhere on what is now called “the autism spectrum”, Elizabeth does not comply with the social norms of the day: everything is taken literally; she says exactly what she thinks, and stubbornly refuses to give up her goal to make groundbreaking advances in the field of abiogenesis – the early stages of evolution involving chemicals in “non-living matter”.

Eventually finding herself a single mother with a desperate need to earn a living after being debarred from research work by appalling levels of male prejudice, jealousy and rank abuse, she lands a job on early evening TV providing the nation’s housewives with wholesome family recipes, which she of course presents as a form of chemistry lessons. Oblivious to the fact that it was her looks which got her the job, Elizabeth mesmerises her viewers with the way she encourages them to think for themselves, have the confidence to pursue their interests and aim high, all in the course of providing scientific explanations for what makes a good pie.

Why has this theme hooked so many readers? It’s probably the sharp humour mixed with the kind of injustices which arouse readers’ sympathy. There are “marmite” characters, like the daughter who is being brought up to be astonishingly precocious, with a daily homily in her lunch box, or “Six-Thirty”, the faithful dog who thinks like a human and really seems to understand the hundreds of words Elizabeth claims to have taught him.

On the downside, apart from the over-reliance on coincidences, and chain of ludicrous events, virtually all the male characters are portrayed as unredeemed sexist monsters, in an overlong, convoluted plot which leads to a somewhat contrived, feeble conclusion. All this means that it is difficult to take this novel seriously – perhaps one is not meant to. Admittedly, it must remind older readers of how bad sexism was before the days of Equal Opportunities legislation, and is perhaps an eye-opener for younger women who do not realise how much has improved, even if not enough. It could spark debate on issues worth discussing. It’s certainly an easy read for someone, probably female, waiting for hours in an airport lounge or for some relatively minor ailment in A&E – or just simply sunbathing on a beach.

Was I supposed to be left wondering whether the author had meant to show that the extremes of good fortune, not just the ill luck, which Elizabeth experience, are all due to the influence of some man, i.e. not really her own efforts?

“The Quiet American” by Graham Greene: mixed motives

Fed by fear of the draft which deterred young Brits from going to America, and a spate of excellent but harrowing films, my memories of the Vietnam War are limited to the doomed efforts of the American government to drive the Communists out of the north in the 1960s. In fact, this war lasted from 1955-75, and was preceded by the shorter first Indo-China about which my knowledge is very shaky. This is the period in which Graham Greene sets his classic, “The Quiet American”, to which I turned with a huge sense of relief after struggling through a few superficial, over-hyped modern novels.

The narrator is Fowler, a cynical British journalist, although we never quite learn what disappointments have driven him so far from his native land. He finds solace in opium and his beautiful young mistress Phuong – a relationship which may seem exploitative to readers seventy years on. He reports objectively on the attempts by the French to prevent the insurgency of the Communist Việt Minh into their Far Eastern colony, showing great foresight in observing that the increasing American involvement will come to nothing, and “in five hundred years there may be no New York or London, but they’ll be growing paddy in these fields, they’ll be carrying their produce to market on long poles wearing their pointed hats”.

Fowler is therefore irritated by what he sees as the naivety of Pyle, an idealistic young American, newly arrived in Vietnam to work for the Economic Aid Mission. It becomes apparent that he may even be a menace, through his desire to meddle in the situation via direct action, by promoting a “Third Force”, as advocated by a writer he much admires.

As Fowler tries to warn him, “We are the old colonial peoples, Pyle, but we’ve learned a bit of reality, we’ve learned not to play with matches. This Third Force – it comes out of a book, that’s all. General Thé’s only a bandit with a few thousand men, he’s not a national democracy”.

Fowler’s growing animosity is fuelled by Pyle’s infatuation with Phuong, whom he wishes to marry and save from what seems to him a sad fate if she stays with Fowler – too old and separated from a wife who refuses to divorce him.

It is not a spoiler to reveal Pyle’s murder, which is reported at the outset. The intrigue lies in the revelation of how this comes about, and the question of the extent of Fowler’s involvement in it, and of the degree to which an action can be justified if the motives are suspect. This psychological drama plays out against vivid images of life in Vietnam of the 1950s, from the cities to the tense encounters with the enemy in the countryside. As a reader, one can simply be absorbed in Fowler’s personal crisis, without always being entirely clear about the various power groups involved. On the other hand, the novel is an opportunity to understand a past conflict more clearly, and consider parallels with the present.

In around 180 pages of tight prose peppered with wry observation and convincing dialogue (except perhaps when Fowler is telling Pyle about love while the two men take refuge in a watch tower), Greene transports us into a different world. To absorb all this, the book needs to be read slowly, more than once. It is a masterpiece, perhaps in danger of being forgotten beneath piles of more recent mediocre undemanding fiction.

“La Decision” – by Karine Tuil – “Believe those who search for the truth, doubt those who find it”.

Best-selling French author Karine Tuil seems to favour novels which focus on current controversial issues as they affect the lives of characters with high-flying professional careers but dysfunctional private lives.

In this case, Alma is a judge who has to decide whether French nationals of Arab origin who wish to return from the Middle East, where they have been in contact with organisations like Islamic State, pose a security risk, or may even face prosecution if there is sufficient evidence. The stress of her job is compounded by the fact that she has fallen out of love with her husband Ezra, and is embroiled in an unwise affair with a charismatic but unpredictable judge, Emmanuel.

Alma is particularly preoccupied with the case of a young detainee called Kacem. Is it too risky to release him into the community, so that, for the sake of the public, he must serve a prison term which is likely to radicalise him into a full-blown terrorist? An added complication is that Emmanuel is the judge representing Kacem, creating a “conflict of interest” for Alma.

This could form the basis for a compelling novel which works on several levels – gripping and also thought-provoking. Yet I was to be disappointed. Was the novel written too quickly? The various plot strands are not well-developed , nor skilfully interwoven. While legal aspects are often dealt with in detail if at somewhat tedious length, others concerning the relations between the characters are too brief, or disjointed and superficial. At times, the book resembles notes for a novel, with simply too much explanation and “telling” as opposed to “showing” readers, to enable them to draw their own conclusions. Too much seems implausible or contrived. Although it is not important for me to like a character, Alma appears too emotional and self-absorbed to be an effective judge, or to arouse much sympathy. The aftermath of “the decision” is potentially the most interesting and moving part of the novel, but marred by being too rushed, with a somewhat trite conclusion.

At least I learned a few idioms and fresh vocabulary in what is a fairly easy read in French. However, I would recommend “Les Choses Humaines” instead, in which the plot and characterisation are handled better.

“The Gardener”: by Salley Vickers – Insight versus second sight?

 

A talented illustrator of children’s stories, the improbably named Halcyon aka Hassie Days finds that contracts have dried up following her decision to focus on caring for her dying father.  Together with her sister Margot, she agrees to share their joint inheritance from him on the purchase of a neglected old house in the Shropshire village of Hope Wenlock.  This is clearly not a good idea since the two have continued their childhood bickering into adult life, and have very different personalities and aspirations, Margot being smart, materialistic and employed in some form of high finance.  It gradually becomes apparent that Hassie is going through a mid-life crisis, triggered by a recent love affair.

At first, I was hooked by Hassie’s wry humour, and insightful observation of varied local characters, or Margot’s friends, despite the apparent inability to manage her own life. The influences which have made the two sisters so different are intriguing.  The descriptions of the scenery around Wenlock edge, and the garden which Hassie transforms with the help of the resourceful Albanian Murat, who may be lying low for reasons connected with immigration, are very vivid and compelling.

However, the last five chapters proved a growing disappointment: “So many things happened in quick succession around this time that I may have got the sequence confused”. I am inclined to speculate with other reviewers as to whether the author was pressed for time to finish, or even struggling to find a happy ending that would not seem too trite.  While some loose ends or last minute crises are tied up too neatly, other threads are brought to the fore without being adequately woven into the tale.  For instance, the accounts of the C7 abbess, St.Milburga, are rather tedious information dumps. As she reads the journals of Nelly East, the former occupant of the house who was so repressed by her husband, Hassie’s affinity with her seems too sudden and undeveloped. Several incidents appeared implausible, too rushed, or both.  Murat remains a two-dimensional character to a frustrating degree.

I could appreciate the process by which Hassie might come to terms with fate, develop a sense of proportion and renewed purpose in life. However, the hint of magic realism, “away with the fairies”, was a step too far.

“Changer l’eau des fleurs” – Fresh water for flowers by Valerie Perrin

Violette has the unusual role of caretaker for the cemetery in the small French town of Brancion-en Chalon. With a tied house on site, the post was meant to be shared with her husband, but this idle philanderer, inaptly named Philippe Toussaint, rode out of her life on his motor cycle without warning nearly two decades previously.

In continual flashbacks, we learn how, born “Sous X” to an anonymous mother and brought up in children’s homes, the pretty but illiterate and unloved teenage Violette was an easy prey for control and exploitation by Toussaint. The birth of her daughter Leonine brings Violette great joy and a sense of purpose, but ties her more firmly to Philippe, until a tragic event which may also be a crime occurs.

Despite all this, the middle-aged Violette finds unexpected solace in the way of life which the cemetery provides: the ceremonies; the visitors; the incidents and anecdotes; the company of a team of undertakers, gravediggers and the Catholic priest with hearts of gold, if somewhat caricatured, and not least by the skill she has learned in planting her garden.

This novel has a filmic quality, no doubt due to Valerie Perrin’s work as a screenwriter, and her connection to the Director Claude Lelouch (of “Un Homme et Une Femme” fame). I wonder to what it extent it may have been inspired by John Irving’s “The Cider House Rules”, a book to which Violette appears to have become addicted.

A prize-winning bestseller in France, translated into many languages, “Changer l’Eau des Fleurs” (Fresh Water for Flowers) was the choice of my French reading group. I found the constant switches back and forth in time, including sub-plots to chart three often fraught love affairs over more than three decades, and clearly designed to build suspense, made it quite hard to keep track of the chronology – but by the end, this did not really matter. Also assuming different points of view, these flashbacks led to constant repetition, perhaps also intended to help the reader. A tendency to reel off a string of examples, when or two would do, and the inclusion of lengthy extracts from the lyrics of popular songs, contributed to the padding out of this book to 660 pages for a somewhat misnamed “Livre de Poche”. Admittedly, by checking out some of the singers on YouTube, I learned a little more about French popular culture.

Similarly, the novel is packed with colloquial idioms, but the desire to improve one’s French was stretched to the limit by the sense of being bombarded with melodrama, and some beyond ludicrous scenes, as when Violette, having somehow learned to ride a monocycle, scares the wits out of some noisy teenagers holding a midnight party in the cemetery, by careering down the alleys between the graves, draped in a shroud decorated with phosphorescent paint, a flashlight whistle between her lips. This was one of the points where I nearly abandoned reading, yet others have singled it out as hilarious. On the other hand, I appreciated a whole chapter devoted to random snatches of conversation heard by Violette as she gardened.

So, if one is not a reader who seeks to escape into a lengthy, sentimental soap opera, where flawed individuals sometimes redeem themselves, where events are often the result of tragic ironies, but the human spirit can survive with remarkable resilience despite it all, you can always choose a novel at the other end of the scale, like one of Claire Keegan’s, instead.

“Thunderclap” – A memoir of art and life & sudden death by Laura Cumming: a question of perspective

The well-known painting, “The Goldfinch” was the work of the little-known Carl Fabritius, whose life was cut short  in the devastation of the Dutch city of Delft in 1654  by the explosion  of a gunpowder store – the “Thunderclap” in the title of art critic Laura Cumming’s “memoir of art and life and sudden death”.

Having been fascinated by her study of the painter Velasquez, “The Vanishing Man”,  and found her attempt to piece together the facts of her mother’s childhood quite atmospheric and poignant, perhaps my expectations were too high for an original take in this case. It soon became apparent that, even with the most forensic research and deepest speculation which characterise the author’s past work, the facts are too thin to justify a full-length book devoted to Fabritius.  So it is filled out not only with observations on Dutch art, but recollections of the author’s own father, a talented Scottish artist who fed her appreciation of Dutch art. She flits between these themes in chapters which read more like articles from The Observer on which she has worked for years – chapters which can be read in any order.

Regretting the lack of an index, and deciding it was Fabritius  who really interested me, I combed the book for information about him, actually starting from the later chapters where the largest photos of his few known paintings are displayed with the most accompanying information and observations. So, the focus is on not only “The Goldfinch”, but a couple of self portraits of the artist himself, an intriguing view of a sleeping sentry with his dog, and the even more riveting  “A View of Delft”.  A small oil painting, only about eight inches by fourteen, this appears to be a product of the painter’s interest in perspective, so that the picture was designed to be attached to a curved surface and viewed through a peephole to give a more three dimensional effect in the days  before photography or film.

Although, to be honest, I found the book overly repetitive, disjointed and rambling, the author has  enabled me to appreciate Fabritius more fully, and to regret that such talent should have been curtailed so abruptly,  at the age of only thirty-two  (1622-54). How much more might he have painted, and would it have made his legacy more celebrated?

Vladivostok Circus by Elisa Shua Dusapin – A question of balance

After graduating, French speaker Nathalie’s first contract is to design the costumes for a celebrated trio of athletes, dedicated to beating the women’s world record in the perilous feat of four consecutive triple leaps without landing in-between on the “Russian bar”, which you need to look up online if not familiar with it. This means an end-of-season journey to the Vladivostok Circus, located on the far eastern shore of Russia, where the team of two Russian “bases”, Anton and Nico, who support each end of the bar, and the young Ukrainian acrobat Anna, with their Canadian manager Leon, plan to prepare for their tour de force in the Siberian capital Ulan Ude – the author has a fascination for remote places.

Nathalie appears quite self-sufficient, and knows what to expect to some extent, having spent time in Vladivostok as a child, because of her father’ work. However, she has to win the trust of the group. Including Anton, who speaks little English, and to understand how they work, in order to conceive costumes which will enhance their performance without creating any physical or technical problems for them. There is an added stress in that Anna is a newcomer to the team, replacing the previous star Igor, who was crippled in a seven metre fall when he failed to land on the bar. Anna still has to prove herself, while Anton in particular may have been traumatised by the accident, plus he is possibly getting too old to continue the only way of life he knows.

Novels are often based on some specialism which the reader is unlikely to know much about: piano tuning, transplant surgery or trompe-l’œil painting to make a surface look like rare veined marble – in this case all aspects of circus performances on the Russian bar. This is revealed through detailed descriptions of the characters’ daily life, with a focus on the banal, while significant events tend to be implied, referred to in passing or covered in a single sentence – like Anna’s achievement of becoming the first woman to succeed in the four triples jumps with descending to the bar.

I discovered Elisa Shua Dusapin through her first novel, “Winter at Sokcho”, a quirky but brilliant portrayal of a young woman, who feels like an outsider, trapped in a dead-end seaside resort near the grim border with North Korea, never having known her father who was French engineer passing through, so attracted in turn to a French graphic designer who happens to visit Sokcho.

With my expectations perhaps raised too high, I found Vladivostock Circus a pale imitation of this. It lacks the striking, often beautiful prose of the earlier novel. There is still the strong sense of place, but although descriptions of the circus, closed down for the season, the port city and the long rail journeys all ring true, they are too often unbearably mundane, as for the most part are the characters’ activities and exchanges.

It may of course be the essential point that a good deal of tedium and dull routine lies behind great achievement – also that the moments of truest connection and deepest insight may occur in the course of nondescript, ordinary life.

This is the kind of low-key novel with a minimal plot, leaving much unclear, which has a “marmite” effect on readers who view it very differently. The chief interest for me lay in comparing the French text with the English translation, which is good, but dares to deviate a good deal from the original wording so that it give some scenes a different flavour.

Overall, there is too little substance to sustain a couple of hundred pages. Perhaps a shorter novella would have made a more powerful impact, with a wider appeal.

The Conversations at Curlow Creek by David Malouf: “bound to an insufficient law”

Set in the 1820s, this is a gripping, striking and memorable piece of historical fiction. It begins in the Australian outback of New South Wales, where a small band of troopers have the grim task of executing, under the rough justice of the colony, one Daniel Carney, the sole survivor of a gang of rebels, bushrangers as they are called, whom they have managed to track down. Adair, the Irish officer in charge, assumes the role of keeping an eye on Carney during the night, ostensibly to find out more about the gang. Even if you are not immediately hooked by the clear prose which creates a vivid sense of place at the remote Curlow Creek, and of the interactions between the characters, do not be deterred by the moments of violence in the first chapter.

Through a series of lengthy flashbacks, the storyline shifts back to Adair’s very different past. Orphaned as a very young child, he had the mixed blessing of being brought up in a wealthy, if eccentric household, where he formed, in a complex triangle, a close attachment to both Virgilia, an older girl who lives at a nearby country estate and to Fergus, born soon after to the lady of the manor who has taken Adair in. Whereas Adair is cautious and responsible, knowing he has to make his own way in the world, Fergus, the family heir, has a Heathcliff-style charisma and wildness. When this eventually takes him to Australia, where he takes up the cause of the underdogs, Virgilia tasks Adair with following Fergus there to find out what has happened to him. So it is that Adair’s long conversations with Daniel Carney in the last hours of his life are primarily to establish whether “Dolan”, the dead leader of the gang, was actually Fergus, and if so, what were his final motives and actions.

This is the framework of what turns out to be a well-constructed plot with moments of high tension, which is nevertheless secondary to the novel’s underlying purpose. It weaves together insights into the colonial experience from both sides in rural Ireland and Australia – different, yet with certain parallels, and also into human nature in general, and how we are shaped by a complex mixture of fate, chance and inheritance – so that in the course of being bound to suffer or impose “an insufficient law”, a man may come to terms with, or “find” himself.

This novel by Australian author David Malouf has a very poetic quality, which is not surprising since his books of verse began to be published before his fiction. His gift for expressing ideas with great clarity, precision, depth and range is very impressive. He deserves to be more widely known, and this book merits being read more than once.

Any Human Heart by William Boyd

It is an achievement to concoct the diary of a man from fifteen-year-old schoolboy in the early 1920s to death six decades later aged 85. It must have involved a good deal of research to select the series of C20 events to form the backdrop, and the book is possibly more appealing to readers of retirement age who can recall or have heard a lot about them in the past.

Logan Mountstuart has a comfortable childhood since his father is manager of a meat company, producing corned beef in Uruguay. On his return to England, a master at his minor public school who has taken a fancy to him steers Logan into an Oxford College from which he emerges with a third class degree, which matters not since his ambition is to become a writer. He has modest success in getting published quite quickly, but feels trapped after making the mistake of marrying an earl’s shallow daughter, on the rebound from rejection by a more intriguing woman. And so he embarks on a chequered life, where in the attempt to make the journal more interesting, his imaginary acquaintances mix with a succession of the rich and famous, movers and shakers, the likes of Hemingway, Picasso, Ian Fleming, even the Duke of Windsor and Wallace Simpson. All of these seem taken with Logan, at least initially. Then there is the US painter Nat Tate, whom some critics have been fooled into thinking actually existed.

However, all the name-dropping quickly becomes tiresome, and I suspect the book may appeal more to men, since it is written very much from a male perspective. William Boyd has explained that Logan was inspired by the journals dating from the 1920s of writer and critic Cyril Connolly, whom he describes as “selfish, promiscuous, talented, hard up, lazy, an epicurean and a particular kind of English intellectual (his tastes were refined but narrow), and I found something about his flawed personality deeply beguiling”. As a female reader, I do not.

Particularly in early life, Logan is not a very likeable character. He can’t resist sleeping with his best friend’s fiancée, he drinks far too much, and lusts after countless women, most of whom conveniently seem to find him attractive. Yet he has odd flashes of integrity, as when he refuses to plant incriminating evidence on a man whom the Duke of Windsor wants “out of the way”, and so years later still bears a grudge against him – Wallace hissing the word “traitor” at a chance meeting.

Logan is at his best in times of adversity. When unjustly imprisoned in Switzerland, which at least ensures he survives World War ll, he distracts himself with a small farm of insects found in his room – woodlice, a cockroach and ants which he “herds together in a small packet” but they keep escaping, which gives him “a vicarious sense of freedom”. Sometimes he is so impoverished that he has to live on tins of dog food, for which he develops a taste, but always lands on his feet. His home may be sold because he is believed dead, but in another stage of life someone will bequeath him a house, admittedly in a rundown state.

He may have to flee the US since he is suspected of underage sex with a girl he didn’t realise was only sixteen, but ends up with a cushy teaching post in Nigeria, where he has a chance to show his decency in trying to free a servant who has been pressganged into an army during the Biafran war. Boyd’s own childhood experience of living in Nigeria may have contributed to this section’s authentic ring.

There is wry, even black humour, in the scenes when, especially in old age, he decides it is not too late to take up a cause like joining a Socialist Patients’ Collective, after experiencing the shortcomings of the NHS, or finding out who is defacing a plaque to a hero of the Resistance in the French village where he has taken up residence – this altruism invariably backfires.

The disadvantages of the diary format is that the entries are often quite short and fragmented. There are too many banal sections, involving lists and humdrum events: how many made to measure summer suits Logan bought, just how much he boozed one night, how he furnished his flat. This may be realistic in terms of what a diary is like, but is pretty tedious. While skimming through the duller patches, it is easy to overlook the names and professions of people in passing, so that when they turn up again three hundred pages later one cannot be bothered to check who they are.

What often feels inevitably unstructured, because it is representing the course of life, and also unbearably long – I felt better disposed to it as my Kindle recorded 80 per cent read – is actually full of many imaginative incidents which could have been developed more fully, and some expressive pieces of writing which one would not normally find in a diary. In other words, would a series of short stories on particular events in the stages of Logan’s life had been more satisfying? Still, this book was longlisted for the 2002 Booker Prize, has been adapted for a television series, and has sold well, so who am I to carp?

Des diables et des saints – devils and saints by Jean-Baptiste Andrea: style over substance

Why does the elderly narrator Joe spend his days playing only Beethoven on the “free” pianos to be found in Paris railway stations? Who is the woman he keeps hoping to encounter, and is she part of some idealised dream?

For much of this novel I imagined that Joe is a gifted pianist who has been traumatised by two events during his adolescence: witnessing the explosion on landing of the plane carrying his parents and “insupportable sister”, and his subsequent despatch to the aptly named “Les Confins”, a grim boarding school for orphans run by the Catholic church in a remote spot on the French border with Spain. This is run by L’Abbé, a sadist who singles Joe out for psychological torture, after his Oliver Twist-style error of introducing himself by “asking for more”, that is a single bedroom instead of a dorm and salad for starters. Sensing that Joe is desperate to play the piano in his study, L’Abbé sets him to work using his digital dexterity to type endless letters for him, under strict instructions never to raise the piano lid. When he suspects Joe of a lie to avoid incriminating another boy, L’Abbé cunningly manipulates Grenouille, his brutal caretaker, in the knowledge that he will subject Joe to physical violence in revenge.

In this take on a well-worn theme, the harshness of the regime at Les Confins is so repetitious as to seem tedious – one becomes inured to it, rather like most of the boys. This is not relieved much by the moments of black humour, or Joe’s identification with and conversations with Michael Collins, the astronaut who circled the dark side of the moon while his colleagues undertook the first moon walk in 1969, and other surreal incidents. Take the occasion when “the Vigie”, the gang to which Joe is admitted, sneak up on the roof to experience the violent wind which blows through the valley “once every three years”. Wedging his feet under a low parapet, Joe spreads his arms wide like wings, to experience the sensation of flying, and freedom. With echoes of “Le Grand Meaulnes”, Joe eventually falls in love with Rose, the spoilt daughter of a rich benefactor of “Les Confins”, to whom Joe is forced to give piano lessons. It can be quite hard to keep up with the author as he flits between scenes.

Many of the incidents are implausible, the characters stereotyped and exaggerated. Yet by the end, the author succeeds in suggesting that L’Abbé himself was once an abused orphan who genuinely believes that it is necessary to punish his pupils to bring them to his version of belief in God, while Grenouille is probably suffering from an old soldier’s PTSD. One has to suspend disbelief over the fact that the fifteen-year-old Joe, son of a comfortably off family, would have been packed off to Les Confins when he was so close to being old enough to go out and earn a living. So much of the book is devoted to his two years spent at the school, that there is too little space to cover the half century he spent with the freedom to come into his inheritance and work as a music teacher, which would have “restored the balance” in real life.

However, Jean-Baptiste Andrea is less interested in realism, except perhaps to move us over the plight of orphans who suffer long-term damage through abuse. Instead, he is more focused on using his quirky style to go off at a tangent on flights of fancy, and observations on life. So this is a novel likely to divide opinion sharply. He is a talented writer, so although I did not care for this particular plot, I shall probably attempt another of his novels, hopefully on a different theme. Best read in French if possible, I suspect……