Review: The Last Rendezvous by Anne Plantagenet

A fictionalized account of French Romantic poet Marceline Desbordes-Valmore's life, this felt to me like I was reading underwater. It was muted and slow. Told in chapters alternating between the young Marceline and the older, more jaded Marceline this is very definitely a tale of an unconventional woman, the only female poet writing amongst a sea of luminaries in France at the time. The novel opens with the older Marceline having spent another afternoon with her lover, Henri, detailing the thrill and the horror of her feelings surrounding this vital affair. How she came to be so torn about this infidelity that fuels her best works of poetry unspools as the book progresses.

As a young girl, Marceline is thrust onto the stage in order to support her family, an emotionally fragile mother who leaves her father for her lover and then her alcoholic father and brother to whom Marceline's loyalty never wavers. The chapters of her early life in the theater, the death of her first child before she was more than a child herself, and her eventual meeting and marriage to her husband, fellow actor Prosper Valmore neatly develop the character of this woman who stands outside the bounds of polite society. Interleaved with these chapters are chapters telling of her adult life, the peripatetic existence she and Valmore must live because of the vagaries of the theater-going audiences in France, the financial worries attendent with this life, and the raising of children in such uncertainty. These later in life chapters also detail the ups and downs of her obsessive affair with Henri, the yearning and distance pervading her writing, earning her fame as a poet.

The novel is bursting with elaborate introspection on Marceline's part, emotional and fraught. It seemed to me to be overwrought in many places and Marceline evoked little sympathy in me as a reader, coming off as a fairly cold character despite these professed ardent feelings. In spite of my lack of engagement with the novel, I did think that the circular ending to the book was magnificent and finely wrought. As for the poetry appended to the book, I was fairly unmoved by it. I'm not certain if that is down to the translation, which makes the poetry seem simple and unpolished, or if it is because I have a long standing block against poetry. I do think that many other people will find this far more to their taste than I did. It is well-placed historically in terms of everyday life but those looking for mentions of the major upheavals in France at the time with be disappointed. Fans of poetry will probably enjoy this imagined glimpse into the not terribly easy life of a once-acclaimed French Romantic poet.

Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy of this book for review.

Review: Nana by Emile Zola

After I finished school, diploma clutched tightly in my hot little hand, I realized that degree notwithstanding, I had some holes in my education through which a careful driver could manuever a truck. Reading snob that I was at the time, I decided that I needed to remedy the situation and live up to my newly minted certification as well read. So I popped out to the local bookstore and snatched up some of the classics we never covered in school. Zola was one of those authors and Nana was the title of his that most appealed to me so home it followed me, whereupon it languished on my shelves unread for something approaching (exceeding?--I don't have record of the date I bought it and my records start in 2002) ten years. Was it because I thought it would be inaccesible? Was it because I shelve alphabetically and so it was at the bottom in a corner? Perhaps it was because subconsciously I knew that it wasn't going to be a very happy reading experience for me. If the last reason is true, sadly, it was prophetic. Before I pulled the book off the shelf and paid for it, I should have read the back cover copy and remembered how very desperately I loathed the Naturalist writers I had read. I could have saved myself a lot of reading anguish this past week.

Nana is the story of an actress who rises up from the gutters of Paris and takes the town by storm, collecting men and their money as she ascends. She is an avaricious creature, not only demanding money from her protectors but also prostituting herself whenever she cannot extort enough money from the seriously ridiculous rich men with whom she surrounds herself. But she doesn't start out quite so greedy. At the start of the story, she is just coming into her own and she is naive in the ways of manipulation. Through her clever maid's offices and the advice of certain hangers-on, she learns to exploit not only her sexuality but the strange magnetism she exudes over men. She is an Eve of the worst sort, shallow and selfish, unconcerned with the destruction of others.

Because this is a novel in the naturalist tradition, it uses very detailed realism and suggests that heredity and social origins determine a person's personality. This tips the reader off to the fact that Nana is not a heroine to strive to emulate. Rather she is a product of the lower classes and must needs be a lesser person as a result, most likely one who will come to a likely end no matter how high she manages to rise as a courtesan. As annoying as this prefiguring based on literary convention made reading, the novel was tiresome for more than just that. Zola takes fully half the novel to develop his character of Nana, drawing her as both stupid (she is a woman, after all) and cunning (ditto). He spends many pages throughout the novel in overly detailed descriptions of rooms, people, clothing, plays, etc. Despite his florid descriptions of the physical settings, Zola manages to make the male characters who flock to Nana like moths to a flame almost entirely interchangeable and indistinct. And so very few of the characters besides Nana achieve any sort of clarity in the mind of the reader. It's hard to read a novel where there is an unpleasant main character and few, if any, distractions from them.

Wasteful, bored, and dissolute characters abound in this ultimately pessimistic, doom-laden offering. It is a classic of French literature, and I suppose that I can be content with myself that another hole in the education has been plugged, but it was a dismal, dreary, and dull reading experience that I can't recommend. Others have offered accolades though so check out differing opinions on the novel before you dismiss it. But if you do choose to ignore my warnings and read it, don't blame me (unless you are an insomniac looking for a sleep aid). Not surprisingly, this will be my only experience with Zola.

I read Nana for the Classics Circuit's tour of Zola although I struggled so much that I missed my official tour date and am only squeaking this review in under the wire in order to be considered a participant at all.

French Historicals Oh-La-La Challenge

I had already planned to finally tackle Sandra Gulland's Josephine trilogy when I came across Enchanted by Josephine's French Historicals Oh-La-La Challenge so I can happily add this challenge to the notches on my bedpost (although said bedpost is starting to look like a beaver's teething toy with my inability to pass by any challenge). I also want to count some French classics towards this one (I'm shooting for La Princesse level, not least because the princesses royal seem to manage to keep their heads while les reines lose theirs) but I'm waiting on official confirmation on whether or not that's allowable. In any case, here are the details as they stand:

The reading Challenge will run from January 1st to December 15th 2010.

***All you have to do is read any Historical Fiction or Non-fiction books based on French history or French historical figures. Books can also overlap with other Challenges.

Reading Levels:

La Princesse: Read 3 books
La Dauphine: Read 6 books
La Reine: Read 9 books
L’Impératrice: More than 9 books

Here's what I'd like to read for this one:

1. The Many Lives and Secret Sorrows of Josephine B. by Sandra Gulland
2. Nana by Emile Zola
3. The Vagabond by Colette