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Lisette's List: A Novel Paperback – June 23, 2015
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In 1937, young Lisette Roux and her husband, André, move from Paris to a village in Provence to care for André’s grandfather Pascal. Lisette regrets having to give up her dream of becoming a gallery apprentice and longs for the comforts and sophistication of Paris. But as she soon discovers, the hilltop town is rich with unexpected pleasures.
Pascal once worked in the nearby ochre mines and later became a pigment salesman and frame maker; while selling his pigments in Paris, he befriended Pissarro and Cézanne, some of whose paintings he received in trade for his frames. Pascal begins to tutor Lisette in both art and life, allowing her to see his small collection of paintings and the Provençal landscape itself in a new light. Inspired by Pascal’s advice to “Do the important things first,” Lisette begins a list of vows to herself (#4. Learn what makes a painting great). When war breaks out, André goes off to the front, but not before hiding Pascal’s paintings to keep them from the Nazis’ reach.
With German forces spreading across Europe, the sudden fall of Paris, and the rise of Vichy France, Lisette sets out to locate the paintings (#11. Find the paintings in my lifetime). Her search takes her through the stunning French countryside, where she befriends Marc and Bella Chagall, who are in hiding before their flight to America, and acquaints her with the land, her neighbors, and even herself in ways she never dreamed possible. Through joy and tragedy, occupation and liberation, small acts of kindness and great acts of courage, Lisette learns to forgive the past, to live robustly, and to love again.
Praise for Lisette’s List
“Vreeland’s love of painters and painting, her meticulous research and pitch-perfect descriptive talents . . . are abundantly evident in her new novel.”—The Washington Post
“This historical novel’s . . . great strength is its lovingly detailed setting. . . . Readers will enjoy lingering in the sun-dappled, fruit-scented Provençal landscape that Vreeland brings to life.”—The Boston Globe
- Print length448 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherRandom House Trade Paperbacks
- Publication dateJune 23, 2015
- Dimensions5.17 x 1.02 x 7.93 inches
- ISBN-100812980190
- ISBN-13978-0812980196
Book recommendations, author interviews, editors' picks, and more. Read it now.
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“[Lisette’s List] great strength is its lovingly detailed setting, a mountaintop village—‘like some fantasy kingdom from a child’s folk legend, altogether dazzling’—whose charm gradually enwraps the reader just as it does the initially resistant Lisette. . . . Readers will enjoy lingering in the sun-dappled, fruit-scented Provençal landscape that Vreeland brings to life.”—The Boston Globe
“Part romance, part historical fiction, part travelogue, part art history text . . . Vreeland knows her art, she knows Provence, and she’s done her historical homework. . . . Lisette’s List offers its readers a pleasurable opportunity to learn something about art, history and ocher, and to enjoy a plucky heroine who grows in ways she never thought possible.”—St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“Mesmerizing . . . Vreeland’s passionate writing is as good as a private showing at the Louvre.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“An entrancing novel of joy and heartache . . . Vreeland provides the reader with a broad spectrum of emotions.”—The Free Lance-Star
“The novel’s heart is its patient interweaving of sensuous, meticulously observed details with themes of forgiveness, female strength, and survival.”—Publishers Weekly
“Lisette’s List is heartfelt, loving and lovely, and asks difficult questions beautifully.”—Shelf Awareness
About the Author
Susan Vreeland is the New York Times bestselling author of eight books, including Clara and Mr. Tiffany and Girl in Hyacinth Blue. She died in 2017.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Road to Roussillon
1937
Amid the crowd of travelers darting in front of the Avignon train station, the delivery boys on ancient bicycles swerving between children and horse carts, and the automobile drivers honking their horns, André stood relaxed, eating an apple from a fruit stand. Meanwhile, I paced in a tight circle around our carpetbags, our valises, and our crates filled with everything we could take with us from our apartment in Paris, plus the tools from his workshop, plus the dream of my life sacrificed.
“Are you sure we’re in the right place?” I asked.
“Yes, Lisette.” André plucked a broad leaf off a nearby plane tree and laid it on a cobblestone. He touched my nose with his index finger and then pointed to the leaf. “He’ll park right there. On that cobblestone. Just watch.” He squeezed my hand. “In the south of France, things happen as they should.”
But apparently in the south of France, buses didn’t operate on schedule, as they did in Paris. Nor did the light have the same effect as it did there. Here, the light singed the eye, wrapped itself around edges, intensified colors, ignited the spine. If it were otherwise, I would not have recognized the loveliness in a bare square that was not Paris, but there it was—a shimmering watercolor of fathers and grandfathers sitting under the plane tree, their white shirts blued by the cornflower sky, which found openings in the foliage, the men eating almonds from a paper bag, passing it from one end of the bench to the other and back again, perhaps talking of better days. They looked content, sitting there, while I withdrew my hand from André’s and made another senseless circuit around the modest pile of our belongings, feeling his gaze following me.
“Look at them,” André said in a low voice. “All members of the Honorary Order of Beret Wearers.” He chuckled at his own invention.
Eventually a boxy little bus, a faded relic once painted orange beneath its rust, sputtered to a stop, the right front wheel crushing the leaf on the cobblestone. André tipped his head and gave me an excusably smug but tender smile.
The stocky driver bounded down the steps, nimble-footed, pointing his toes outward as weighty people do to keep their balance. He hailed André by name, reached his thick arm up to slap him on the back, and said he was glad to see him.
“How’s Pascal doing?” André asked.
“He gets around all right most days. Louise takes him his meals or he eats with us.”
The driver bowed to me with exaggerated courtliness.
“Adieu, madame. I am Maurice, un chevalier de Provence. A knight of the roads. Not, however, Maurice Chevalier, who is a knight of the stage.” He sent André a wink. “Your wife, she is more beautiful than Eleanor of Aquitaine.”
Foolishness. I would not fall for it.
Had he said Adieu? “Bonjour, monsieur,” I responded properly.
I was amused by his attire—a red cravat above his undershirt, the only shirt he wore, which dipped in front to show his woolly chest; a red sash tied as a belt; his round head topped by a black beret. Black hair curled out from his armpits, a detail I could have done without noticing, but I am, thanks to Sister Marie Pierre, the noticing type.
He placed a hand over his fleshy bosom. “I deliver ladies in distress. Enchanté, madame.”
I gave André a doleful look. I was in distress that very moment, already missing the life we had left behind.
“Vite! Vite! Vite!” The driver circled his arm around our bags in three quick movements, urging us to move quickly, quickly, quickly. “We leave in two minutes.” Then he was gone.
“One vite was enough, don’t you think?”
With a wry twist of his mouth, André said, “People in Provence speak robustly. They live robustly too. Especially Maurice.” André began loading our bags and crates. “He’s a good friend. I’ve known him ever since I was a boy, when Pascal used to take me to visit Roussillon.”
“What’s the red sash for?”
“It’s a taillole. It signifies that he’s a native son, a patriot of Provence.”
We waited ten minutes. Two men took seats in the back of the bus. Soon I heard robust snoring.
Our self-proclaimed chevalier finally scurried back. “Sorry, sorry. I saw a friend,” he said, working every feature of his round face, even his wide nostrils, into a smile of innocence, as though having seen a friend naturally justified the delay. He pumped up the tires with a hand pump—robustly, I observed—and started the engine, which choked in resistance, then lurched us ahead under the stone arch spanning the ramparts and out into the countryside to the east.
The road to Roussillon between two mountain ranges, the Monts de Vaucluse to the north and the Luberons to the south, kept me glued to the window. I had never been to the south of France.
“Stop here!” André ordered. The bus came to a shuddering stop and André hopped out, plucked a fistful of lavender growing wild along the roadside, climbed back in, and presented it to me. “To welcome you to Provence. I’m sorry it’s not in its full purple bloom yet. In July you’ll be astonished.”
A sweet gesture, sweet as the fragrance itself.
“How far is it to this Roussillon place?” I asked the driver as we started down the road again.
“Forty-five beautiful kilometers, madame.”
“Look. I think those are strawberry fields,” André said. “You love strawberries.”
“And melons,” Maurice added with a nasal twang. “The best melons in France are grown right here in the valleys of the Vaucluse. And asparagus, lettuce, carrots, cabbages, celery, artichokes—”
“Yes, yes,” I said. “I get the idea.”
He would not be yes-yessed. “Spinach, peas, beets. On higher ground, our famous fruit trees, vineyards, and olive groves.”
He pronounced every syllable, even the normally mute e at the ends of some words, which made the language into something energetic, decorated, and bouncy instead of smoothly gliding, as it is in Paris.
“Apricots. You love them too,” André said. “You are entering the Garden of Eden.”
“I see one snake and I’m taking the next train back to Paris.”
I had to admit that the fruit trees, laden with spring blossoms, exuded a heavenly fragrance. The grapevines were sprouting small chartreuse leaves, wild red poppies decorated the roadside, and the sun promised warmth, so welcome after a frigid winter in Paris.
But to live here for God knows how long—I had more than misgivings. For me to surrender the possibility of becoming an apprentice in the Galerie Laforgue, the chance of a lifetime for a woman of twenty with no formal education, had already caused resentment to surface in me. When André had made what seemed an impulsive decision to leave Paris and live in a remote village just because his grandfather had appealed to him to keep him company in his failing health, I’d been shocked. That he would so easily abandon his position as an officer of the Guild of Encadreurs, the association of picture-frame craftsmen, a prestigious position for a man of twenty-three, was inconceivable to me.
I had gone crying to Sister Marie Pierre at the Daughters of Saint-Vincent-de-Paul, the orphanage where I had been raised, complaining that he was shortsighted and selfish, but she had given me little sympathy. “Judge not, Lisette. See him in the best light, not the worst,” she’d said. And so here I was, bumping along in clouds of dust, despairing that I wasn’t in Paris, city of my birth, my happiness, my soul.
Following Sister Marie Pierre’s advice to try to see the situation in the best light, I ventured a possibility. “Tell me, monsieur. Does this town of yours have an art gallery?”
“A what?” he screeched.
“A place where original paintings are sold?”
He howled a laugh from his belly. “Non, madame. It is a village.”
His laughter cut deeply. My yearning for art was nothing casual or recent. Even when I was a little girl, this longing had been a palpable force every time I stole into the chapel of the Daughters of Saint-Vincent-de-Paul to look at the painting of the Madonna and Child. How a human being, not a god, could re-create reality so accurately, how the deep blue of her cloak and the rich red of her dress could put me, a young orphan without a sou to my name, in touch with all that was fine and noble, how such beauty could stir something in me so deep that it must have been what Sister Marie Pierre called soul—such things drenched me with wonder.
André jiggled my arm and pointed out a cluster of red geraniums spilling over the window box of a stone farmhouse. “Don’t worry. You’re going to like it here, ma petite.”
Because of geraniums?
“Certainement, she will,” Maurice chimed in from behind the wheel. “Once she becomes accustomed to les quatre vérités.”
Four truths? “And what might they be, monsieur?”
“You see three of them right here.” He took his arm off the steering wheel to wave vaguely at the countryside, apparently able to drive and listen and talk and gesture all at once. Presumably that was a skill of living robustly. “The mountains, the water, the sun.”
True enough. The sunlight made the snow on the peak of a mountain to the north blindingly white. It shone on a river to the south in dancing specks of brilliance and turned the canals into iridescent silver-green ribbons.
“And what’s the fourth, monsieur?”
“It can’t be seen, and yet its mark is everywhere.”
“A riddle. You’re telling me a riddle.”
“No, madame. I’m telling you a truth. André, he knows.”
I turned to André, who tipped his head toward the window and said, “Think and look. Look and think.”
I studied the landscape for some mark.
“Does it have to do with those stone walls?” They were actually only remnants of walls, piles of flat stones forming barriers nearly a meter thick, some with wayside niches for figures of saints, I presumed, although I hadn’t seen any.
“No, madame. Those were built in the Middle Ages to keep out the plague.”
“Not a comforting thought, monsieur. Neither is that scraping noise. Is there something wrong with your brakes?”
“No, madame. You are hearing the sound of cigales. Insects that make their mating calls when the temperature gets warm.”
Definitely something I would have to get used to. Thickly planted cypress trees lined the north sides of the vegetable fields. Their pointed shadows stretched toward us like witches’ gray fingers.
Looking from side to side, I noticed another peculiarity. “Why don’t the houses on the right side have windows facing the road, while the ones on the left side do?”
“Now you’re thinking. Look. They all have windows on three sides, but not on the north.”
But why? Did the sun glare through north windows too strongly? No. It would shine from the south, giving light to only half of the house. The other half would be dark and gloomy.
When I asked André for a hint, he told me to look at the roofs. They were terra-cotta tiles, long, tubular, and overlapping. Flat stones had been placed at their northern edges.
Product details
- Publisher : Random House Trade Paperbacks; Reprint edition (June 23, 2015)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 448 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0812980190
- ISBN-13 : 978-0812980196
- Item Weight : 2.31 pounds
- Dimensions : 5.17 x 1.02 x 7.93 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #391,427 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,650 in Military Historical Fiction
- #4,617 in War Fiction (Books)
- #21,498 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Susan Vreeland's short fiction has appeared in journals such as The Missouri Review, Confrontation, New England Review, and Alaska Quarterly Review. Her first novel, What Love Sees, was made into a CBS Sunday Night Movie. She teaches English literature and Art in San Diego public schools.
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Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonCustomers say
Customers find the story engaging and well-written. They appreciate the detailed descriptions of the artists and their styles. The characters are described as compelling and human.
AI-generated from the text of customer reviews
Customers enjoy the engaging story with vivid descriptions that immerse them in the setting. They find the intricate details about art, artists, and paint colors interesting and informative. The book provides an insightful introduction to painting and artists, and readers appreciate the historical context.
"...There is grief, happiness, friendship, jealousy, love and great food!" Read more
"...This completely believable work of fiction connects Paris and the artists of the late 19th and early 20th century with the Provençal village of..." Read more
"...about art as all of Ms. Vreeland's books are and teaches readers much about painting and artists. I enjoy books set in France...." Read more
"...The mining of ochre, the back story of the Impressionists paintings which were the focus of the story and the Nazi interest in the artistic..." Read more
Customers enjoy the book. They find it interesting and engaging, especially for those who love art and artists. The book holds their interest throughout with its descriptions of lovely villages.
"...the town and environs are described accurately, saturated with the south of France sun and colors...." Read more
"...and of the village throughout seasons and years, and the role of art and beauty in life. This is a wonderful read!" Read more
"...It is set in Paris and the beautiful little town of Roussillon, now much loved by tourists...." Read more
"I read this one for my book club and I did enjoy reading it for the information about survival in rural Provence during and just prior to WWII..." Read more
Customers enjoy the writing quality of the book. They praise the author's descriptive style and find the story engaging. The characters are well-drawn and the writing is easy to read.
"...The writing is very nice with lovely descriptions of art, nature, and characters...." Read more
"I love Susan Vreeland's books. They are extremely well written and well researched and this book is no exception...." Read more
"...overall, a good read." Read more
"...the discussion of Pisarro and Cezanne was insightful, and the descriptions were clear. The discussion of ochre and paint hues fascinated me...." Read more
Customers enjoy the book's insightful and captivating descriptions of artists and their styles. They appreciate the author's knowledge about painting and the progression of painting styles. The stories about well-known painters and the memories it brings back are also enjoyed by readers.
"I loved this book! The novel is about a real town in Provence and 3 famous painters...." Read more
"...It is intellectually challenging in a very good way in that I often had to call on my knowledge of many things disparate to understand what was..." Read more
"...’s concept provides Vreeland with the opportunity to showcase her knowledge about artists and painting, enthrall the reader with glorious scenic..." Read more
"...It suited the purposed perfectly; the discussion of Pisarro and Cezanne was insightful, and the descriptions were clear...." Read more
Customers enjoy the detailed descriptions of villages and countryside in France. They find the book enthralling with its vivid scenery, Provence region, and Paris. The author also provides wonderful descriptions of artists and painting.
"...Much of the town and environs are described accurately, saturated with the south of France sun and colors...." Read more
"...The descriptions of the Provence region are breath-taking. Makes me want to go there. Soon. In case you're wondering, I seldom give any book 5 stars...." Read more
"...her knowledge about artists and painting, enthrall the reader with glorious scenic descriptions, and display the product of meticulous research...." Read more
"...It is a tale of art, characters, customs and country life in a time of war. The author paints pictures with her words." Read more
Customers find the characters compelling and well-developed. They also appreciate the intriguing story and heroine.
"...The focus is on the characters, The life in and of the village throughout seasons and years, and the role of art and beauty in life...." Read more
"...writing is very nice with lovely descriptions of art, nature, and characters...." Read more
"...The main characters, especially Lissette, were well developed and human...." Read more
"...It is a tale of art, characters, customs and country life in a time of war. The author paints pictures with her words." Read more
Customers enjoy the book's survival story. They find it fascinating and heartwarming, with a tale of history, art, and hardship during wartime. The story is full of love, heartache, and friendship.
"This is a slow-moving, beautifully written story of history, art, survival and patience...." Read more
"...The connection to the art world was fascinating. Lisette's strength and determination was inspiring...." Read more
"...history of France and WW11, French farmhouse cooking, or a fascinating story of survival, you will love this book." Read more
"...insight into lives of painters, the region of Roussillon and the hardships of war." Read more
Customers have different views on the plot complexity. Some find it complex with original characters and a bit of mystery, history, and love. Others feel the story is predictable with repetitive details and unrealistic praise for the artist.
"...The characters are original and complex. It's a great reminder that humans are amazingly adaptable and creative, even in difficult situations." Read more
"...While the plot is a bit predictable the story unfolds with accurate information of 20th century French artists, the specialized ochre industry, and..." Read more
"...Lisette's strength and determination was inspiring. I loved the development of each and every character and was so sad when the book ended...." Read more
"...A bit of mystery, a bit of history and every form of love." Read more
Top reviews from the United States
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- Reviewed in the United States on October 31, 2024I loved this book! The novel is about a real town in Provence and 3 famous painters. Much of the town and environs are described accurately, saturated with the south of France sun and colors. The three famous painters are described in reality with several paintings that I had to see on the internet.
There is grief, happiness, friendship, jealousy, love and great food!
- Reviewed in the United States on June 1, 2019Susan Vreeland has again created a novel about art and artists that brings the reader into their world. This completely believable work of fiction connects Paris and the artists of the late 19th and early 20th century with the Provençal village of Rousillon where the pigments used in the paints were mined, through the characters of the Parisienne Lisette and her grandfather-in-law, Pascal, a miner and pigment seller. It also traces the progression through Pisarro and the earliest pre-impressionist art through Picasso and up to Chagall, who appears as a character in this novel.
Although the story covers the period from 1936 through 1949 and includes the Nazi occupation of France and the war, The focus isn't on the war. The focus is on the characters, The life in and of the village throughout seasons and years, and the role of art and beauty in life. This is a wonderful read!
- Reviewed in the United States on July 18, 2015This book takes place from 1937, just before the war in Europe broke out until 1948, a period of eleven years, just before, during, and right after the war. It is set in Paris and the beautiful little town of Roussillon, now much loved by tourists. The story is about art as all of Ms. Vreeland's books are and teaches readers much about painting and artists. I enjoy books set in France.
Lisette is the main character, but Pascal, her grandfather-in-law is the character who begins the book. Pascal began as a miner in the ocre mines, then a paint seller in Paris, a frame maker who is given several paintings because the artists cannot afford to buy materials to work on their paintings. Pascal helped them moneyways. As time goes on, these artists, Cezanne and Pissarro,become famous. Pascal realizes they will be, their paintings are priceless. Lisette and her husband, Andre, move to Roussillon. Pascal is aged, health failing. Oh how Lisette misses Paris where she has always lived and loved. Her mentor is the wonderful nun, Sister Marie Pierre, who taught Lisette to love life and to be aware of the world around her. Lisette was raised in a Catholic orphanage in Paris, her parents are gone.
Cezanne is from Provence, much admired by Lizette, Andre and Pascal. His paintings remind them so much of their home which all three love. Lisette falls in love with Roussillon, Provence and its people. Lisette writes out her list of seventeen different accomplishments she needs to work on. She has a hard time living during the war time, needing to live by herself, to do for herself. Andre has enlisted, leaving her alone in a strange world, a small provincial village. She is gifted with a small goat she names Genevieve, the Patron Saint of Paris, a hen she names Kooritzah, to provide milk to make cheese and get eggs. She loves these animals. There are the seven priceless paintings Andre has hidden that Lizette must find. The question is are these paintings worth more than human lives.
Ms. Vreeland writes beautifully about Roussillon and the countryside surrounding the village, plants, flowers, trees, birds in that part of the world. She knows much about Roussillon, Provence, Vaucluse and the history during the war. People are struggling to provide food, material to make clothes and shoes needs to be able to live. The Vichy government is stealing everything away to send to Germany. There are citizens who are traitors to their own country and turning in friends, neighbors, relatives to do well with the enemy. There are Resistance fighters fighting to save France.
Lisette loves art more and more and meets others who share her passion. She meets artist Marc Chagall and wife Bella who love goats and chichens as much as she does. Marc paints beautiful, different paintings. The couple are living in Gordes, needing to escape to America. Refugees from Paris are moving into Vaucluse,fleeing the Nazis, moving into abandoned buildings. Gypsies wander around. Waiting for Godot was written by Samuel Beckett possibly when he and two British ladies were living in Roussillon. Ms Vreeland has done much research on this book.
After a long, horrible time, the war finally ends. The Arlington Art Museum is presenting paintings by Toulouse Lautrec, Kimball Art Museum in Fort Worth is presenting art by Braque. Timely.
- Reviewed in the United States on April 21, 2019I read this one for my book club and I did enjoy reading it for the information about survival in rural Provence during and just prior to WWII occupation by Germany. The mining of ochre, the back story of the Impressionists paintings which were the focus of the story and the Nazi interest in the artistic treasure in France held my attention. The writing is very nice with lovely descriptions of art, nature, and characters. However, it is basically a romance novel that goes on a little too long.
- Reviewed in the United States on May 26, 2016I love Susan Vreeland's books. They are extremely well written and well researched and this book is no exception. It is intellectually challenging in a very good way in that I often had to call on my knowledge of many things disparate to understand what was going on--Latin (I never took French), art, European History, and WWII. The main characters, especially Lissette, were well developed and human. The man that you initially think will be a villain turns out to be just another lonely man. The man she falls in love with is not easy to win because of his own struggles with PTSD. The descriptions of the Provence region are breath-taking. Makes me want to go there. Soon. In case you're wondering, I seldom give any book 5 stars. This one deserves it.
Top reviews from other countries
- Ann Victoria RobertsReviewed in the United Kingdom on February 19, 2017
5.0 out of 5 stars Love, Life & Art
This novel held my attention from the first few pages. Art, I love; France, I love; so to have both those elements in a beautifully-written wartime novel, was a pleasure indeed. Susan Vreeland conveys the beauty of Provence, its harshness and privations before and during WW2, with the story of her heroine, Lisette Roux, a stranger from Paris. Weaving through the novel is the gripping tale of seven significant paintings.
As Lisette’s husband, Andre, leaves for the war, he hides the canvases, but gives only a small clue as to their whereabouts. Lisette’s determination to find them again, keeps the reader turning pages.
Other reviewers have given details of the story, so I will not repeat them here, except to say that criticisms of ‘lack of plot’ are, I feel, unfounded. This is a novel about character and place, and the effects of one upon the other. Roussillon changes Lisette, as do the local people; the war and its deprivations teach her not simply how to survive, but what is important in life. And as ‘Lisette’s List’ of hungers and vows increase, so do they change as she grows and matures as a woman.
The author’s research must have been extensive, and yet the details were perfectly blended – like the artists’ pigments – into a truly beautiful story. I have visited Roussillon, in Provence, and seen the glowing colours of its ochre cliffs, so perhaps I was already halfway there - but I loved ‘Lisette’s List’ and will delight in reading it again.
- Fireweed 9Reviewed in Canada on September 24, 2014
5.0 out of 5 stars Lisette's List casts a spell
There are never enough stars for Susan's work. This book is wonderful. It brings the south of France, it's people, the land, the art, alive. As well, there is a mystery to be solved and I always find that engaging.
The characters grow on you just as they did for Lisette.
I was disconcerted however by the way the first chapters were written-- crowding a lot of details about the Impressionists' lives and art into a short time frame--but then this treatment began to make sense in terms of the little time available to one of the characters to convey this information.
I was very pleased to learn more about the lovely town of Rousillion (where I actually visited this summer). And I enjoyed reliving the sounds, smells, and beauties of that area of France through Susan's word pictures. Similarly, I gained a new perspective about what the French people had to go through during the war years.
The love of Paris features here too as Lisette reflects upon her earlier life there and often compares her provincial way of living to the urban wonders of that city. It is fun to visit her favourite haunts with her.
This book also shares numerous love stories and overcoming various types of adversity. I admire the way Susan weaves in and develops the characters that come to mean so much to Lisette and to the reader.
A delight of a book. Highly recommended.
I bought the kindle version but I will buy the hard copy version too, to have it on hand in my library.
- Paula NeyReviewed in Canada on October 21, 2021
4.0 out of 5 stars Enjoyable
An interesting historical novel. Enjoyed it very much.
- Marilyn MacMullenReviewed in Canada on July 28, 2018
5.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating story
The author made me fee that I too was living in rural France during the war and its aftermath. I loved Lisette’s list and her search for meaning and purpose. Her appreciation of the paintings and of art and artists along with rich descriptions of scenes and colours and skies compelled me to read on avidly to the end.
- Mrs. Mary McginlayReviewed in the United Kingdom on September 23, 2018
2.0 out of 5 stars not good
could not get into this