At this point you can tell his own interest appears fully engaged. I particularly liked his detailing of the construction of the Statue of Liberty and the Eiffel Tower. It is easy to mock, but there are moments when Rutherfurd's pre-digested account of Paris down the ages works well. Dialogue, meanwhile, is conventional and very English despite the addition of the occasional "Monsieur". Real people are often so much more interesting than fictional. Rutherfurd is nothing if not predictable.Īlthough this is a novel, in an endnote the author tells us that even the historical figures, among them kings (mostly named Louis, inevitably), Claude Monet and Ernest Hemingway, "are entirely fictional", so you can be forgiven for wondering why he bothered to include them. And who is the young man who shares her mattress? None other than an earlier Roland de Cygne. Here we are in 1261: Martine, a nubile young widow in her 20s, is sleeping around ("she might as well enjoy herself") before marrying again, we are told. You only know which century we are in because Rutherfurd gives us the date at the head of each chapter. After two opening chapters in the late 19th-century we are suddenly shifted back to the 13th, but nothing in the characters' language has any period feel. Rutherfurd adopts the spoonful of sugar principle. There's also a priest, Father Xavier, who provides another plot clue: "As for the little boy," muses the cleric, "God surely had a plan for him.
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