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Welcome

I started this blog in 2013 to share my reflections on reading, writing and psychology, along with my journey to become a published novelist.​  I soon graduated to about twenty book reviews a month and a weekly 99-word story. Ten years later, I've transferred my writing / publication updates to my new website but will continue here with occasional reviews and flash fiction pieces, and maybe the odd personal post.

ANNE GOODWIN'S WRITING NEWS

Let Me Tell You About A Man I Knew

2/6/2016

4 Comments

 
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Provence, 1889, and there’s a new arrival at Saint-Paul-de-Mausole, the former monastery at the foot of the mountains that’s now an asylum for those too troubled, eccentric or disturbing to survive outside. The Dutchman, known for his red hair as the fou roux, is the first new patient for years and, though this spells extra work by the already worn-out warden, Charles Trabuc, his wife, Jeanne, is curious, even excited at the prospect of someone new. Although, warned by her husband to stay away from the patients, she can only watch from the cottage overlooking the grounds, she’s eager for change.
Jeanne has always been curious, even as a child in Arles, she’s wanted to (p48):

walk through all the rooms that were locked to her. To enter those shady, private gardens whose gates she’d stare through, holding their bars, and do hand-stands there.

Although she’s lived at the edge of the small town of Saint-Rémy for thirty years, she misses the colour and vitality of her birthplace, epitomised in her father’s haberdashery shop (p105):

the silks of pale pink or turquoise or apricot; the velvets; the amethysts and jade in brooches. Cochineal, from beetles. Indigo from the far, far east. And that egg-yellow silk that made others gasp at how bright it was, how it glowed by candlelight.

Shopping in the market, she’s an outsider, treated with suspicion by the other women, not only because she hails from elsewhere but through her proximity to the “lunacy” they fear and through her refusal to indulge their curiosity about the inmates. Early in her marriage, the love she shared with her husband staved off loneliness; later she was too busy bringing up three children to care. But now her boys have left home, and the one friend she had has also fled, she’s lonely and starved of affection. She and her husband sleep in separate beds and, at mealtimes, he gives more attention to the newspaper than to her. What she notices most about Charles these days is his rigidity, in both his habits and his insistence on his rules.

Despite this, and Charles’s military background, the asylum operates a benign regime. So the new arrival is free to paint within the hospital courtyard and, later, out in the fields and olive groves. In the summer’s heat, Jeanne takes him a cup of water, even sits on the grass and chats to him. Although her husband has forbidden any association with the patients, both for their sake and hers, and the townsfolk are bound to disapprove, Jeanne is her own woman. Undaunted by his reputation, by the sight of his missing ear or by witnessing his atypical epileptic fit, she regards the Dutchman as a friend.
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When Charles discovers that Jeanne has gone to Vincent’s room to sit for her portrait, he’s so angry he destroys the canvas. Soon after, Jeanne develops a fever and, when she recovers, her “rage clenches like a fist” (p206), not only at what her husband has done and his refusal to seek forgiveness, but the smallness of her own life.

The pleasures of this quiet novel lie not only in the contextualisation of van Gogh’s well-known paintings, but in the story of a long marriage gone astray and a woman’s later-life coming-of-age. Mutual misunderstandings and each partner’s wish to avoid burdening the other with their individual pain have made the couple almost strangers. The question is whether, when the painter moves on to be nearer his brother Theo, Jeanne and Charles will be left better or worse for having known him. Susan Fletcher’s sixth book, Let Me Tell You About a Man I Knew is published by Virago, to whom thanks for my review copy and slot on the blog tour. I'm delighted to host this novel for my 400th post.

My latest short fiction publication, “A Smell of Paint”, is also about a troubled painter, although not in the league of van Gogh; my second novel, Underneath, to be published in May next year, also features some brightly-coloured artwork and a disturbed and disturbing young man. For other novels I’ve reviewed depicting mental hospitals at a similar point in history, see The Ballroom and Playthings, both rather darker institutions than the one in this novel.

While (if) I’ve still got your attention, I’ll flag up that I’m planning another blog tour of my own to mark the first birthday of my debut novel, Sugar and Snails, at the end of next month. I’m looking mostly for reviews and Q&A’s to coincide with a proposed e-book promotion during the last two weeks of July. Do let me know if you can offer a stopping-off point.

Thanks for reading. I'd love to know what you think. If you've enjoyed this post, you might like to sign up via the sidebar for regular email updates and/or my quarterly Newsletter.
4 Comments
Norah Colvin link
4/6/2016 12:28:38 pm

Hi Anne,
My interest in this book increased when I saw Vincent's artwork and discovered he was the character in the book. It sounds like an interesting read.
I did follow the link to read your story "A Smell of Paint" but, while I enjoyed the journey, I didn't reach the destination. (The link is broken and that is the message supplied - cute. I prefer it to "Snap".)
Wow! A year since "Sugar and Snails" was published! How quickly it has flown. Of course, you are always welcome to visit me if we can work out a suitable theme. :)

Reply
Annecdotist
4/6/2016 01:35:35 pm

Yes, I’m sure a lot of readers will be attracted to this novel for the insight into van Gogh, but it’s also very much Jeanne’s story and I wanted to write my review from that perspective with the identity of the artist coming later – as it does in the novel itself, although I imagine most people will know what it’s about from the cover.
Thanks for following the link (and I disagree with them about the enjoyable journey, although perhaps it gives people the opportunity to explore the site from a different angle) and pointing out it didn’t work. I’ve fixed it now, but don’t know why it wasn’t working (I got to identical web addresses one which took me to my story and another that didn’t – I wonder if it was connected to the title being in quotes.
Thanks for the offer to host a slot on the blog tour which I might get back to you on later, but I am trying to keep it more constrained this time!

Reply
geoff le pard link
6/6/2016 01:22:46 pm

The book reminds me of a set of short plays that i saw in Edinburgh a few years ago - they were based on notes from Broadmoor about famous, or rather infamous inmates but looked at the human dramas around the names and the egregious crimes- interesting juxtapositions. And of course you are welcome to space on my humble book if that fits your plans. Let me know.

Reply
Annecdotist
8/6/2016 11:52:47 am

That sounds interesting, Geoff, and thanks for the offer of a slot on your no-need-to-be-humble blog. I might be in touch.

Reply



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