2.5

Tracy Chevalier è una garanzia, non ho ancora trovato un suo romanzo che mi abbia fatto storcere il naso (i frutti del vento è quello che mi ha coinvolto di meno, ma non può dirsi brutto).
Questo mi ha regalato tante emozioni, tantissime. Perché in questo romanzo si parla di antenati, vite passate e i legami invisibili che ci collegano ad essi.
Perché anche se razionalmente non si spiega, ci sono fatti, persone o luoghi che fanno risuonare qualcosa in noi, o a cui sentiamo di appartenere.
Per me lo sono certi posti in Toscana, lo è S. i cui occhi raccontano storie antiche e mi richiamano a casa; alcune amiche che sono sorelle e anche alcuni quadri.
Proprio come per Ella, la protagonista di questo romanzo che ripercorre la storia e le vicende di Isabelle Tournier e della sua famiglia.
Ella stessa è una delle discendenti Tournier – Turner è la semplice versione americanizzata- e grazie al trasferimento del marito Patrick in un paesino della francia, inizierà una ricerca delle sue radici. Anche perché in lì non può esercitare la sua professione di ostetrica, soprattutto per via delle barriere linguistiche.
A guidarla però non sono le carte d’archivio o vecchi registri, sono soprattutto sogni, intuizioni ed angosce. Un mistero che vuol essere risolto, un’ anima che vuole la pace.
E ad aiutarla ci sono un bibliotecario un po’ scontroso(in apparenza)e che ama suonare il pianoforte, la collega Mathilde e il cugino Jacob che vive in Svizzera.
Patrick, il marito, rimane scettico, incapace di capire lo slancio che la porta a voler far luce sugli antenati, forse perché preso dal lavoro e maggiormente integrato nella nuova realtà che stanno costruendo.
Per Ella sarà un viaggio durissimo ma fondamentale per trovare la serenità che ha paerso col trasferimento in Francia.

In parallelo l’autrice racconta la storia di Isabelle
“si chiamava Isabelle e quando era bambina i suoi capelli cambiavano colore nel tempo che un uccellino impiega a chiamare il suo compagno.”
detta la Rossa per il colore dei capelli e come la gente chiamava la Vergine Maria del luogo.
Isabelle che è cattolica, ma quando la riforma di Calvino arriva a Mont Lozer a travolgere tutto ,deve vivere la sua fede di nascosto e i suoi capelli e le superstizioni che girano al riguardo.
Aiuta la madre che è la levatrice del villaggio e vive piuttosto serena, ma nel giro di poco tutto cambia e si trova sposata a Etienne Tournier: per lei è l’inizio di un incubo capeggiato dalla suocera, ma rasserenato solo dall’arrivo dei figli e in particolare di Marie.

Le due storie si alternano, prima lentamente, poi sempre più velocemente in un finale da pelle d’oca.
Bellissimo!

Come dicevo all’inizio quest’autrice per me è bravissima e sono rimasta sorpresa quando ho scoperto che questo è stato il suo primo romanzo! (io sono partita da “La dama e l’unicorno, che mi ha fatto innamorare di lei) e per fortuna mi sono rimasti da leggere due o tre dei suoi lavori, che tengo per i momenti di crisi.

Mi piace tanto il fatto che dia voce alle donne, che le renda protagoniste quando troppo spesso la storia le dimentica o le cancella.
In questo romanzo, poi, prevale il senso di angoscia: sia di Ella che di Isabelle, come se la Chevalier volesse sottolineare che anche se in epoche diverse, certe emozioni ,certe inquietudini, non hanno età. Sono retaggi che ci portiamo dentro e dietro, spesso inconsapevolmente.
È stato bello e faticoso seguire Isabelle, sentire la sua frustrazione, la sua impotenza: quanto avrei voluto che ci fossero stati marito e suocera sotto il basamento del camino! Quanto dolore nel constatare la tragedia e la follia.
Mi è piaciuto tantissimo il finale! E che la Bibbia (intesa proprio come oggetto fisico oltre che simbolico) abbia fatto da fil rouge.

Amore a prima vista per il pastore e per il venditore ambulante!
Che bei personaggi ha saputo creare questa grande autrice (tra l’altro pubblicata da una delle mie case editrici preferite, la Neri Pozza).

Chi ama i romanzi storici e le grandi storie di donne non può perderselo!
5 stelle!
Buone letture e alla prossima!

Two women face life-changing challenges in Tracy Chevalier's "The Virgin Blue."

Isabelle, whose hair changes color to auburn, the supposed color of the Virgin Mary's hair, becomes La Rouse during the time of the Reformation and watches as her community turns away from the Virgin's veneration. All the family's beliefs are challenged, especially as Isabelle's sister and then her mother die. Her brothers leave to fight in a war, never to return. She tells her father that she will marry and she and her husband will live with him and help with the farm, but the man that she marries, Etienne, is from a family that her father hates. Soon the Reformation comes to their community and they are forced to flee for their lives.

Four hundred years later, Ella Turner travels to France and moves into a small town with her husband, Rick. Ella is at first enthusiastic about the town but she is surprised at behavior of its citizens and so, while brushing up on her French with hopes of becoming a midwife, she is soon involved in looking into her family history.

Two women both facing challenges of culture, perception and belief. As Chevalier weaves their two stories together, it creates a full, rich tale of a family history. While I found it interesting how different these women are, they both seek a place of their own, a feeling of safety and sureness. A very good story.

Quel dommage. And it tried to hit so many of my favorite things, too. I mean, France, genealogy, and a historical topic that is seldomly represented in English literature. What could wrong?

n  n    ‘Ah, the blue of the Renaissance. You know there is lapis lazuli in this blue. It was so expensive they could only use it for important things like the Virgin’s robe.’n  n

Here we are again with le bleu. But this is Tracy Chevalier's first novel, so it's not as good as her other novels. There are better books about this famous shade of blue, too, that do better at helping the reader appreciate it, such as Christopher Moore's n  Sacré Bleun.

n  n    An old man appeared on the opposite bank. —Don’t stop here, he said abruptly. Don’t stop at all until you reach Vienne. It is very bad here. And don’t go near St Etienne or Lyons. He disappeared into the woods.n  n

This novel is told through dual timelines, one taking place in the late 1500s that is mostly in the aftermath of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, during which prominent Huguenots (French Protestants) were murdered by a Catholic mob when they went to Paris to attend the marriage of Henri de Navarre, who was later King Henri IV of France (he was killed too, as was Henri III before him).

In this timeline, we follow Isabelle, who lives in the Cévannes and...marries a boy who raped and bullied her. Most people around her are abusive religious extremists who had recently converted to Calvinism from Catholicism. Even though I'm not religious, I'm still biased as to which sect I like more, especially if a Jesuit enters the picture. Alas, there are no Jesuits here, just crazed ignorant people, and Isabelle is stuck there unable even to look upon an image of the Virgin Mary because that would distract from God and encourage polytheism.

In any case, things aren't looking good for Isabelle.

n  n    ‘Because you are basing all your proof on coincidence and your guts rather than on concrete evidence. You are struck by a painting, by a certain blue, and because of that and the painter’s name is yours you decide he is an ancestor? No.n  n

In the present timeline, we have Ella, who leaves a lot to be desired. She just moved to a town outside of Toulouse and decided to do her genealogy (read: have other people do her genealogy).

As someone who worked at a genealogy library for seven years, the idea of a burgeoning romance between a librarian and a helpless genealogist is both preposterous and revolting. But it doesn't stop there. Over the course of the novel, Ella amasses a small army of people whose primary focus seems to be helping her family research. She is even given a ~500-year-old book held by an archive, even though, after so many centuries, there could be hundreds of thousands of other descendants, making Ella far from uniquely suitable to be given this fragile archival material. These are all sentences I should never have had to write.

It so happens that Ella's ancestors, the Tournier family, i.e., the one that produced the rapist whom Isabelle married in the other timeline.

n  n    They all know my business, I thought. Even a Tournier across town knows my business.n  n

Both Ella and Isabelle are gossiped about and criticized by the generalized towns they live in. Ella struggles to feel at home with the French, while Isabella is considered a guileless slut for having red hair and asking a traveling merchant for news. The story includes a vague supernatural element that connects the two women (as well as other female Tournier descendants).

Ultimately, there are too many problems that range from an annoying main character (Ella) to plot points that don't ring true (giving archival material to a random American). The present timeline half-reads like a helpless library patron's fantasy trip to France. The thread is even lost in the 1500s timeline, which failed to impact me because of how unbelievable the ending was. I think it might have even tried to imply something like reincarnated lovers as a little side thing. Yeah.

Overall, most readers should focus on Chevalier's other novels, particularly n  The Lady and the Unicornn, which is also partially set in France.

I thought this was an ok read. It is a story about an American woman who moves to Paris and starts to have dreams about her ancestor who lived during the Huguenot times.

I did find the bit where they were just carrying around a body in the bag a bit weird. I found it hard to believe that would happen in real life.

This kinda of has a stereotypical romance novel feel to it- married women meets French man, and they have an affair and that sort of thing. But there is another story besides this one that is really interesting, about her ancestor during medieval times. It follows her as she gets married and raises a family, and the issues she must deal with in her community and home during a time where social rules were changing under religious turmoil. I enjoyed it.

O carte captivantă, care te ține în suspans. Autoarea reușește să efectueze o conexiune superbă dintre trecut și prezent. Două femei, două destine, patru secole distanță unite și inundate de un albastru pur.
Ella cu soțul se mută în Franța, unde se simte izolată și străină. Fiind tulburată de un vis straniu dorește să efectueze cercetări despre strămoșii săi francezi. Descoperirele din trecut îi schimbă viziunea asupra prezentului.

I picked it up and a day and a half later, I set it down. At first, I wasn't sure what I was getting myself into, but 20 pages in and I was completely hooked.

Since I haven't read anything else by Tracy Chevallier, I wasn't sure I would enjoy her writing. I was happy to discover she has a natural knack for character development, I found her to be a very honest author, unafraid to describe what "we" are really feeling inside. Exposing the vulnerability of human nature with her intertwining stories of love, hate, religion, persecution, adultery and redemption.

The pace of the novel starts off a little slowly, there is a lot to get through to grasp all the characters and their roles. Halfway muddling through the French dialog was a little difficult at first, but well worth the effort. And as the story progressed, became more intense and began revealing the secrets shared by the two main characters, the chapters became shorter and shorter, the structure of the chapters began to change, which increased the pace set early on.

My only wish is that there had been more follow through with a few revelations that Ella (our main character from the modern age) discovered about her ancestors. (specifically the painter Nicolas Tournier...Who was this cat after all? Tracy never says for sure)

And I wish there had been more between Ella and Susanne her cousin from Switzerland; they shared the family secret but their relationship ended too quickly for me. And later with Ella and Elizabeth her cousin from France. They shared a kindred spirit, but Tracy left me desiring more of the relationships. Ella's feelings toward Elizabeth were contradictory with the way the story ended. At first she doesn't know if she wants to relate to her, but in the end she's spending quality time with Elizabeth but no reconsiliation has been made for her original emotions regarding Elizabeth and the Tournier family history.

Also, there was no explanation as to who's teeth they discovered under the chimney at La Baume du Monsieur, Tracy discusses it briefly in regards to Hannah (the grandmother from the 1500's) and her belief that "the home is safe, the hearth will protect us...", it was a little confusing because it was never fully explained. And lastly, did they burry Marie near Deborah? She wanted to see her again. Did she finally rest near her?

The only reason I can criticize these things is because I enjoyed the book so much, I wish there had been more to it. I was left wanting more...Is there any better compliment to an author?

I found this an unpleasant book, which left me with the feeling it had been written to fulfill an obligation. It had a thin and nasty plot, and little in the way of depth of character. I did wonder, cynically, whether it had been written to provide a way to fund a trip to France.

I was even a little sceptical about the research, but not enough to revisit my texts.

I have had medium enjoyment from some other works by this author, so was disappointed by this effort. It felt as if it had been thrown together, with a few common themes muddled into the one book, so as to tick a few selling points. We have a failing marriage and the necessary seductive frenchman and charming french village, some unconvincing psychic moments and a nod to brutal religious practice. It seemed a mishmash, which wandered for the minimum number of pages, then ended withut much purpose.

I would not have even finished if I had had other reading matter to hand. I would tell others not to waste their valuable time and mind.

Really enjoyed this story but I was SO confused by the last couple of pages. Had to go back and re-read them a few times before I figured it out...and it really wasn't that complicated; it's late...that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

So this book started off strong -- very strong. The story of the 1500 Isabelle was very interesting, although could have been developed a little more, I think. I actually had a hard time putting the book down in the first three quarters or more. However, by the end, I was pretty much tired of it. Tired, because it was so odd and unbelievable, and I'd really stopped caring for Ella, the modern-day main character.

I loved the idea of what was happening -- the same land, same family, a modern day version of the character trying to solve a puzzle or a mystery of what had happened to her long-ago counterpart. But there were parts of it that added nothing to the story and made the characters less likeable.

I liked Ella a lot in the beginning, but didn't understand why the author gave her the relationship she did with Jean-Paul. It just didn't make sense, and didn't develop the story any more. Odd.

I realize this sounds like I didn't like it at all. Which isn't true -- I did, but became sort of disillusioned with the characters in the end.

I cared more about some of the side characters than I did for Ella -- Mathilde, Sylvie, Jacob, Susanne. And of course, Marie.

This was definitely an interesting book, and I did learn quite a bit of French history while reading it. But I think the author had a great idea and didn't know how to write the story around it, so the rest was weak.

I like Tracy Chevalier's writing. Her books, Girl with a Pearl Earring and Falling Angels were terrific. This book was good and I did finish it, but it fell short compared to her others.

I enjoyed the story of Isabelle du Moulin more so than Ella Turner's story. Isabelle is a tragic heroine and I wanted to learn more about her and her situation. Ella's story, while less tragic certainly, entertained me but did not grasp me. I felt distant from her somehow. I think she created her own problems and then looked for others to solve them.

I would have preferred a better ending as well. I still felt at a bit of a loss as to Isabelle's life and her subsequent demise.

I would recommend her other books to this one.