Peter Mayle, is of course famous for A Year in Provance which I found a bit tiresome, and smug. I think I abandoned it before getting to the end. However, I found Chasing Cezanne amusing, light, clever, entertaining, and what more can you ask?

The hero, Andre, is a green-eyed photographer, specializing in work for "House and Home" sort of magazines, interiors of wealthy people's houses etc, and gets most of his business from a formidable editor called Camilla.

Meanwhile, in his own agency, we met the curvaceous Lucy, "Lulu" to Andre, who is a pretty girl from Barbados.

During the course of the book, Andre is drifting into love with Lulu, and there is something pleasing in this. I liked her a lot too. (Maybe I was influenced by her choice of drink, dark rum, no ice. What a sensible kind of girl, I thought. I would have been quite cross if he had ditched a nice girl like Lulu for anyone else. (Although he did have one little fling that contributed nothing to the main story....just gratuitous "spice", I suppose.)

Well, one of the things Peter Mayle does know about is Southern France.... notably the bit where a lot of wealthy people live. He also appears to know lots about what they drink, what they eat, what cars they drive and what oil paintings they like to collect.

This is a chase... involving good guys and bad guys, a little intrigue, a little skullduggery, a lot of aeroplane hopping and visits to exotic locations punctuated by some gastronomic name-dropping and over-eating.

It is holiday reading... not too taxing. Ideal to take to the sun bed with you when you have no one to talk to, but don't want anyone to feel sorry for you.

For the record, I have many friends and never use sun beds.

There seems to be something in the tragedy of Hamlet that speaks to us all. I think I myself have seen three different movie versions, though I never did make it all the way through the one I most wanted to see. Reviving Ophelia and Ophelia Speaks are both still on my shelf from when I read them years ago. Lisa Klein, who once taught English, has here given us yet another version of the story.

Through Ophelia's own eyes we watch her life unfold. The loss of her mother at birth, a hardened father, a dear brother. But her father's courtly aspirations soon separate Ophelia from what little family she has, leaving her stranded amongst ladies who want little to do with her. Still, her matron Elnora is kind, and she has Queen Gertrude's favor. In these things she is happy, and for a time, learns to keep it so.

While she will never take to her sewing, and is still prone to speak her mind, Ophelia has learned the arts of observance and wit. And Elnora, much pleased with her cures, has left her to study not only herbs, but whatever she chooses as often as she likes. The life of study, which she knew growing up, more suits her.

But still life at the castle feels like nothing more than a cage to her. A sentiment which Prince Hamlet, returned from study abroad, commiserates with. Though each knows it to be wrong, still the pair are drawn together with a strength it is beyond them to deny. Horatio, Hamlet's most trusted friend, becomes their only ally.

For a time, all is well. They have their love, and while hiding it strains Ophelia, and indeed causes her to lose the Queen's favor for a time, she would not give it up for anything. But upon the heels of their secret wedding comes much woe.

King Hamlet is slain. Too close to his passing, his Queen remarries his lustful brother, who is not fit to rule. Hamlet, claiming to have been told the truth by none other than his father's spirit, becomes possessed with revenge. A path down which Ophelia cannot follow.

Soon all are drawn into the plot. The gentle Horatio, Ophelia's father. Indeed, having stumbled upon the truth, and after showing her perhaps the largest kindness he ever has, her father is killed. By none other than her own husband. A sorrow she cannot fully express, as no one knows. And while Hamlet tried to come to her himself, his wretched state left him barred entry.

On and on the madness continues. While first a pretense, Hamlet is soon lost to his mind. Ophelia, following with her own pretense, hoping with it to win invisibility, at times seems lost as well. And is also brought to realize that she works against herself--drawing more attention rather than less.

With the help of trusted Horatio, she devises a plan. Brewing a potion, she fakes her own death--though a little too closely for comfort. The life she knew being lost for all time, Ophelia flees to France, where she is taken in at a convent.

Long fearful of her past, she does not fully divulge the truth to anyone until the birth of her son has come to pass. Those who did not already know some of the truth are quickly won over when they hear the news. And while the past will always haunt her and the future will bring fear, Ophelia has learned much through her entrance to motherhood, and looks on each new day as a gift.

_________________

I really, really enjoyed this book. I think it's a great take on the historic Tragedy, and wouldn't be surprised to find schools putting it to good use. Klein should be much pleased with her Ophelia, who transcends, despite all odds.

Thanks to books like Charlotte Gray and Birdsong and TV programmes like (I'm slightly ashamed to say) 'Allo 'Allo I've grown up with a belief in French patriotic solidarity - one for all and all for one against the invading Germans. That belief is now in tatters thanks to Suite Francaise.

This book is the first two sections of the five part epic that Nemirovsky had intended to write.

In the first section, A Storm in June, we experience the exodus from Paris through the eyes of around 6 families as the German army draws near. Most of the characters are wealthy, spoiled and self-centred. I found myself silently screaming at some of the worst offenders as they complained about their food and lodgings - be glad you're alive! Motivated by greed and fear, they are more concerned with their precious possessions that their fellow man - where was their much vaunted fraternity?

As the convoy of Parisians travels south, thoughts turn to the horrors of the war to come. This contrasts with Nemirovsky's loving descriptions of the French countryside.

The second section, Dolce, is a portrait of the small, rural town of Bussy, and looks at how life goes on under occupation. With a German soldier billeted in almost every home, Dolce touches on the local's relationships with the occupying troops. The almost impecable behaviour of the individual German officers contrasts greatly with the selfish upper classes.

As Nemirovsky wrote the book in 1941 she had little or no knowledge of the Nazi atrocities. It seems strange and remarkable that she humanised the monster that was soon to kill her and her husband.

The appendice gives an insight in the author's life and I found it more gripping than the novel itself.

Born in Kiev in 1903, the daughter of a wealthy Jewish banker, Irene fled Russia to France in 1918. She led a privileged life and became a critically-acclaimed writer. But all that changed in 1939 and she was forced to send her two daughters to the country, where she and her husband joined them two years later. By this time 'laws governing the status of Jews' had been pronounced by the collaborationist French government. Irene's husband Michel was barred from working in his bank, while she was dropped by the literary establishment.

Irene was arrested in 1942, days after finishing Dolce. She survived only 10 days in Auschwitz. Her husband's increasingly desperate letters and telegrams, trying to establish his wife's whereabouts, are printed in the appendice. He was arrested and deprted two months later.

Amazingly their daughters survived in hiding and in their possession a suitcase containing, among other things, their mother's manuscript.

We may prefer to remember that the French barely tolerated the Vichy government and resisted the Germans. Irene Nemirovsky saw something different.