Product Description

This book is from the bestselling author of "Girl With a Pearl Earring", a reissue of her first novel, which was first published in 1996. This is the compelling story of two women, born four centuries apart, and the ancestral legacy that binds them. Ella Turner does her best to fit in to the small, close-knit community of Lisle-sur-Tarn. She even changes her name back to Tournier, and knocks the rust off her high school French. But it is all in vain. Isolated and lonely, she is drawn to investigate her Tournier ancestry, which leads to her encounter with the town's wolfish librarian. Isabelle du Moulin, known as Le Rousse due to her fiery red hair, is tormented and shunned in the village - suspected of witchcraft and reviled for her association with the Virgin Mary. Falling pregnant, she is forced to marry into the ruling family: the Tourniers. Tormentor becomes husband, and a shocking fate awaits her. Plagued by the colour blue, Ella is haunted by parallels with the past, and by her recurring dream. Then one morning she wakes up to discover that her hair is turning inexplicably red!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #127019 in Books
• Published on: 2006-12-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 312 pages

Review
'Tracy Chevalier's first novel is a triumph. Excellent.' Time Out 'An intriguing and poignant read.' Sunday Express 'Such an achievement for a serious writer that you feel it deserves an award.' Independent

Sunday Express
‘An intriguing and poignant read.’

Independant
‘Such an achievement for a serious writer that you feel it deserves an award.

Customer Reviews

not to be missed by fans
Though oddly reminiscent in plot to Barbara Erskine's best-selling Lady of Hay, Tracy Chevalier's first novel is a pleasure to read. It doesn't quite achieve the heights of Girl with a Pearl Earring, (hence the 4 star rating,) but shares its unforced sympathy for its characters, erotic tension, ability to evoke the past and clarity of style.

Five hundred years ago, a red-haired Huguenot girl, La Rousse, sees her mother, a sage-femme or midwife, killed in the remote Cevenol area of France. Subsequently, she is married, unwillingly, to a bullying husband and forced with others of his faith from their home. She falls in love with an Italian pedlar and is mysteriously protected by a wolf, before her love of a piece of blue cloth brings disaster. When Ella Turner, an American married to Rick, comes to the same area she begins to be haunted by flashes of the colour blue - the colour of the Virgin Mary's robe. She is trying to become pregnant, although her relationship with her husband is increasingly compromised by an attraction to the French librarian, Jean-Paul. With his help, and that of her Swiss relations, Ella uncovers fragments of an ancient crime involving the persecution of the Hugenots and the presence of the mysterious blue of the Virgin's robe...and as she does so, her own hair turns red, like that of her ancestress.

The novel switches between Ella's narrative voice and an account of a past that may or may not be "true". Ella is a highly engaging character - quirky, stubborn, funny, and completely at odds with the provincial French town in which she finds herself. Her growing passion for Jean-Paul is conveyed with an economy that successfully skirts the novelettish, and her professional pride in her work as a midwife gives her a realism that is particularly welcome in a tale of shifting times and perceptions. An excellent and entertaining novel, which will be enjoyed by fans of Alice Hoffman and Rose Tremain.

An evocative novel of today's France and it's history.
Ella Turner, Tracy Chevalier's main character, arrives in France from America almost an appendage of her husband for it is his job that they have followed. Gradually, as Ella becomes Ella Tournier and tries to follow the haunting dreams that she has, we see the development of her character into the real Ella Turner/Tournier. This novel is evocative of Chocolat by Joanne Harris, with similar touches of mysticism and the same feel for the characters, landscapes and architecture of France. The characters are many faceted and although there are several clues along the way, with the interwoven chapters about Ella's long ago relatives, the Tournier family, the climax of the book is still both shocking and moving.I felt sorrow and regret for characters from almost 500 years ago as if they were really living today. A fabulous, page turning read and I can't wait to read Girl With a Pearl Earring by the same author.

AN EXQUISITE AND TRIUMPHANT DEBUT NOVEL...
This is a beautifully written debut novel. Exquisite in its imagery and clarity of language, the author tells two parallel tales. One takes place in sixteenth century France, during the Protestant reformation and religious persecution of the Huguenots (Protestants). The other takes place in present day France. There are historical ties that bind these two stories, as well as a haunting familial legacy that reaches out across time to makes itself felt in the present.

The sixteenth century tale is based around a young woman, Isabelle du Moulin, who marries a boorish lout named Etienne Tournier, the oldest son of one of the more prominent families in their provincial town in France. She is a young woman upon whom the Virgin Mary made a great impression, when she was but a girl. The Tourniers, however, are believers of the new, harsh, Calvinist faith, and so Isabelle must also fully subscribe to it, if she is to survive in her husbands family and in the town in which she lives. When the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre occurs, in which Huguenots are slain without mercy throughout all of France, Isabelle is forced to flee to safety with what remains of her husband's family. Unhappy in her marriage, she goes on to have an event occur in her life that is so tragic that her pain and sorrow is made palpable in the present, touching one of her ancestors, Ella Turner.

Of course, the parallel tale focuses around Ella Turner, a young, married American woman, who moves to France with her husband Rick, in order to advance his career. Ella agrees to the move, because it will take her to the region in France from which she knows her family originated. Once in France, Emma has some difficulty acclimating to life in the small provincial town to which they have moved, as well as to its denizens. Ella also finds herself having inexplicable nightmares and begins to feel herself somewhat alienated from her husband. To occupy her time, she begins a quest to discover more about her French ancestry. As Ella's story unfolds, alternating with the parallel story of Isabelle, commonalities between the past and present begin to emerge. These parallel stories then converge in a stunning denouement to resolve a tragedy of the past in the present.

I absolutely loved this book, as it covered many of the genres that I enjoy. The author combines historical fiction, suspense, romance, and touch of the supernatural all in one beautifully realized novel. The author writes with the heart of a poet and the soul of a great storyteller, one whose prose is delicately nuanced as she weaves gossamer threads of a tale well told. This is simply a superlative and stunning debut novel that will keep the reader turning its pages until the very last. Bravo!