Firstly, an outline of the story. The main character is Charles, a successful architect who travels the world with his projects and is rarely home. Charles has a very modern relationship with his partner, Laurence. They are not married but have been together for many years and Laurence’s daughter Mathilde has a much closer relationship with Charles than her own mother. Mathilde now fourteen, is at that difficult teenage stage, but she is the one thing keeping Charles and Laurence together. Then one day, Charles gets a letter from his childhood friend, Alexis, a letter with just three words “Anouk is dead”.
Anouk, Alexis’s mother, was so very different from his own parents that she drew him in like a lure. She was loud, funny and full of life and as a nurse, she cared about other people. But, to Charles, she was also sexy and she was Charles's first love. Everything changed when the two boys were in their late teens. Alexis, a talented musician, becomes addicted to drugs and treats his girlfriend, Charles' sister, badly. Charles and Alexis lose touch as you often do in these circumstances, and thus Charles saw less and less of Anouk.
The letter turns out to be a catalyst for Charles to look at his life and his relationship with Laurence. It brings back memories both good and bad, and motivates him to start a journey to find out how Anouk died and why she was buried in a suburban cemetery in an area that represents those things she always despised - cheap district housing and racism. While seeking out Alexis, he meets Kate, damaged by life and with a brood of adopted children, lives on a ramshackle farm in a small provincial town, and with whom he experiences an instant connection. Kate, is in some ways, Anouk reincarnated. Is this his second chance?
The first half of the novel was hard to get into, written in small snippets of events, from different points of view. In retrospect, I can see that the style of writing reflected the depression, uncertainty and churning that characterised Charles’ life at this point, but, for me, it made it difficult to keep up with the story and I often got a little lost. Maybe, the author was trying to make her novel fit the literary genre more closely to remove the label of women’s fiction from it, but I thought it made hard to get emotionally involved with the characters and the story in the way I had in Hunting and Gathering.
The second half of the novel flows more smoothly and the characters are easier to understand and empathise with. The novel takes the reader on a gentle journey as Charles discovers himself, and delves into the meaning of family, friendship, and love. I preferred this approach as it I got caught up in the feelings that it evoked, and I think I was disappointed that the first half of the novel wasn’t in this style. To me, the novel feels like it has been written by two different authors, with only Charles as the connection, and I found this a little confusing. I couldn’t decide whether the book was aimed at readers of literary fiction or for the reader of more popular fiction.
In retrospect, I’m not sure I would recommend this book if you were tossing up between a few, but may be a good one for the book club as there are a lot of issues to promote discussion.
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