A Desperate Fortune by Susanna Kearsley
For the past few months, I had been on a steady diet of fast-paced adventure and fantasy novels, full of swashbuckling action, thrilling chases or magical mayhem. Then, last week, I realized that Susanna Kearsley's "A Desperate Fortune" has been languishing on my bookshelf since last year, and decided to pick it up. I had read Susanna's "Mariana" as well as Slain's series before, and knew that she was an author who I definitely liked. Hence I picked up her latest book too.
However, I had reckoned without the fact that my reader's mind had, by this time, got accustomed to surprising twists and turns happening after every few pages of a book. Anyone who has read a Susanna Kearsley novel before, will know that her writing style is more exploratory and gently-paced, reminiscent of yesteryear's authors such as Mary Stewart. Her novels need to be savoured and not raced through in one sitting! So in the initial few chapters of "A Desperate Fortune", when nothing much happened, I kept getting distracted by other books on my TBR list. It's only because of my great respect for Susanna Kearsley's writing that this book didn't land up in my DNF pile. I'm now glad that it didn't, because my impatience would have caused me to miss a book whose characters I ended up liking.
This is a past-present book, like most of Susanna's latest novels, and alternates between the present- day France and France and Italy in 1732. It is a well-researched book, and Susanna devotes the first few chapters to setting the context carefully, before the actual story begins. I found the story and relationships in the past much more evolved than those in the present. For me, the book started getting really interesting after a certain Scottish character with dubious motives gets introduced in the past, but more on that later.
Sara Thomas has always known that she is different from the others, but it was her caring cousin Jacqui who helped her identify that she had Asperger's syndrome and trained her to cope with her condition. Over the years, Sara has learnt to tune her senses to be calm in social situations and to pretend to be normal. She has also discovered that she is good with numbers and complex codes, and enjoys working as a programmer and an amateur code breaker.
At a family wedding, Jacqui offers Sara an intriguing opportunity to work for a famous historian, Alistair Scott. Alistair is writing a new book on the Jacobite exiles, based in the period in British history when there were a series of unsuccessful rebellions in Scotland to restore the Stuart kings to the English and Scottish thrones. It seems that one of Alistair's friends has stumbled upon a diary written in 18th century which can provide him with valuable source material for his book. The only problem is that the diary is encrypted with some sort of a cipher which no one has been able to decode yet. Sara takes up the offer and travels to Chatou, a suburb on the outskirts of Paris, where the present owner of the diary, Claudine Pelletier, stays.
On reaching the pretty Maison de Marronniers or the "House of Chestnut Trees", Sara meets the polite but somewhat aloof photographer, Claudine, and her friendly, young housekeeper, Denise. She is not very happy to know that their next door neighbours are Luc Sabran, Denise's handsome ex-husband, and their nine-year-old son, Noah. Sara knows that she is incapable of socialising on a regular basis and wishes that she had absolute solitude while working on the diary. She also feels an unwelcome attraction to Luc and does her best to ignore it because she believes that she is bad at sustaining relationships, given her condition.
As she starts working on the diary, Sara realises that it belonged to Mary Dundas, a well-educated, young woman of Scottish origin, who was staying in the same region as the present-day Chatou, back in 1732. It is revealed from Mary's entries that her father was a supporter of the Jacobite Revolution and had left her to be raised by her well-off uncle and aunt in France. One day, her brother Nicolas, whom she barely remembers, comes and takes her from her uncle's house and sends her to Paris on a mission to provide cover for a fugitive who is working for the deposed Stuart king, King James. Nicolas assures her that there is no danger involved in her few weeks' stay in Paris, and that she will also be accompanied by a suitable, elderly chaperone and by her faithful dog, Frisque. Mary has always hungered for adventure and is excited to finally be able to leave her known surroundings. On the advice of another Jacobite supporter, she starts to encrypt her diary using a simple cipher, so that any information on the Jacobites that is contained there will stay hidden from prying eyes.
In the present, Sara struggles initially to break the so-called simple code. As she tries to solve the puzzle, she discovers, to her surprise, that she doesn't really mind being around Noah and the house cat, Diablo. She even takes Noah's help to understand the code. She also starts spending more time with Luke, exploring the sites and sounds of Chatou, and discovering that she actually enjoys his company. I liked Susanna's descriptions of the French town and of the nearby Chateau de Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Along with Sara, I savoured the quaint French customs such as celebrating Epiphany or the end of Christmas season with "king-cakes".
In the past, Mary meets her kindly chaperone, Madame Roy, and Jacques, the supposed fugitive who is to pose as her brother in Paris. Jacques looks harmless enough, but Mary soon realises that all is not well. There is a sudden murder of a guest by an intruder and they have to flee across France, pursued by an unknown number of strangers bent of capturing Jacques. Susanna does a great job of peeling off the layers of the story gradually, and the reader is as mystified as Mary as to what is truly happening and where they are actually bound for. Who is Jacques and why is he a fugitive pursued by the English? Who is the Scottish man, Mr. Macpherson - a murderer or a saviour? Who is Madame Roy? Who, out of these, can Mary really trust?
As the journey progresses and the story unravels, we see Mary growing up as a person - from a young, eager-to-please girl to a poised, confident young woman who is steadfast in her loyalties, convictions and affections. She has the unique ability to weave fairy tales inspired by the tales written by Madame d'Aulnoy, and invents enthralling, magical stories about a Chevalier to keep other passengers travelling with them distracted from her group's true purpose. Before reading this book, I had no idea of the existence of such beautiful fairy tales written primarily by French women writers in the late 1600s and early 1700s.
In the present, Sara too starts realising that she can be herself with Luc and Noah and lets go of her inhibitions. There are not one but two romances in the present, but somehow they did not grab me as much as the poignant relationship between Mary and the one she eventually ends up loving. The development of their relationship is a gradual, slow-burn kind of love, where words are hardly exchanged but every look, every touch is filled with profound meaning. In Mary's own words:
"He watched me from afar when he believed I could not see him. He followed me when he believed that I was not aware of it."
There are several memorable passages in this book, especially towards the end. Here's one I found very touching:
"How do you go from...fixing things, making things work, to --"
He finished the thought for her. "Killing them?"...She had expected his words to be bitter as well, but instead she had heard resignation in his level voice as he'd answered her, low, "Step by step."
"But surely, if you marked the steps as you made them, you could then turn around and retrace them and find your way back to the place you began," she had reasoned. "Like taking the road that you left by, and letting it lead you back home."
He had looked at her quietly. "Home is not always where ye left it."
This phrase stuck me as so true; not always in life can we retrace our steps back to where we were at the beginning of our journey - because circumstances have changed, surroundings have changed, and most importantly, we have changed by then. This is what Mary too realises at the end of her journey - that she cannot get back the relationships that she has lost. But along with that understanding, she also displays remarkable resilience and strength in her willingness to rebuild her life:
She felt a strange kinship with that ancient bridge that was forever being carried off in tiny pieces by the underlying current, and yet did not have the sense to yield, to let go of the shore and simply fall....
"Yet the bridge still stands, and surely every broken thing can be rebuilt."
While the present story is wrapped up quickly, the threads in the past take a bit longer to tie up and it is fitting that the book ends with Mary's thoughts:
Let currents flow and kingdoms fall and time move onward, Mary thought - this moment was for them....It mattered not that no one else would bear that moment witness nor remember it, for if the future could not know them, neither could the past confine them, and the choice was always theirs to make, the tale their own to finish...
Isn't that true for us all?
However, I had reckoned without the fact that my reader's mind had, by this time, got accustomed to surprising twists and turns happening after every few pages of a book. Anyone who has read a Susanna Kearsley novel before, will know that her writing style is more exploratory and gently-paced, reminiscent of yesteryear's authors such as Mary Stewart. Her novels need to be savoured and not raced through in one sitting! So in the initial few chapters of "A Desperate Fortune", when nothing much happened, I kept getting distracted by other books on my TBR list. It's only because of my great respect for Susanna Kearsley's writing that this book didn't land up in my DNF pile. I'm now glad that it didn't, because my impatience would have caused me to miss a book whose characters I ended up liking.
This is a past-present book, like most of Susanna's latest novels, and alternates between the present- day France and France and Italy in 1732. It is a well-researched book, and Susanna devotes the first few chapters to setting the context carefully, before the actual story begins. I found the story and relationships in the past much more evolved than those in the present. For me, the book started getting really interesting after a certain Scottish character with dubious motives gets introduced in the past, but more on that later.
At a family wedding, Jacqui offers Sara an intriguing opportunity to work for a famous historian, Alistair Scott. Alistair is writing a new book on the Jacobite exiles, based in the period in British history when there were a series of unsuccessful rebellions in Scotland to restore the Stuart kings to the English and Scottish thrones. It seems that one of Alistair's friends has stumbled upon a diary written in 18th century which can provide him with valuable source material for his book. The only problem is that the diary is encrypted with some sort of a cipher which no one has been able to decode yet. Sara takes up the offer and travels to Chatou, a suburb on the outskirts of Paris, where the present owner of the diary, Claudine Pelletier, stays.
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| Chatou, France; Source: Wikipedia |
On reaching the pretty Maison de Marronniers or the "House of Chestnut Trees", Sara meets the polite but somewhat aloof photographer, Claudine, and her friendly, young housekeeper, Denise. She is not very happy to know that their next door neighbours are Luc Sabran, Denise's handsome ex-husband, and their nine-year-old son, Noah. Sara knows that she is incapable of socialising on a regular basis and wishes that she had absolute solitude while working on the diary. She also feels an unwelcome attraction to Luc and does her best to ignore it because she believes that she is bad at sustaining relationships, given her condition.
As she starts working on the diary, Sara realises that it belonged to Mary Dundas, a well-educated, young woman of Scottish origin, who was staying in the same region as the present-day Chatou, back in 1732. It is revealed from Mary's entries that her father was a supporter of the Jacobite Revolution and had left her to be raised by her well-off uncle and aunt in France. One day, her brother Nicolas, whom she barely remembers, comes and takes her from her uncle's house and sends her to Paris on a mission to provide cover for a fugitive who is working for the deposed Stuart king, King James. Nicolas assures her that there is no danger involved in her few weeks' stay in Paris, and that she will also be accompanied by a suitable, elderly chaperone and by her faithful dog, Frisque. Mary has always hungered for adventure and is excited to finally be able to leave her known surroundings. On the advice of another Jacobite supporter, she starts to encrypt her diary using a simple cipher, so that any information on the Jacobites that is contained there will stay hidden from prying eyes.
In the present, Sara struggles initially to break the so-called simple code. As she tries to solve the puzzle, she discovers, to her surprise, that she doesn't really mind being around Noah and the house cat, Diablo. She even takes Noah's help to understand the code. She also starts spending more time with Luke, exploring the sites and sounds of Chatou, and discovering that she actually enjoys his company. I liked Susanna's descriptions of the French town and of the nearby Chateau de Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Along with Sara, I savoured the quaint French customs such as celebrating Epiphany or the end of Christmas season with "king-cakes".
 |
| Chateau de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France; Source: Wikipedia |
In the past, Mary meets her kindly chaperone, Madame Roy, and Jacques, the supposed fugitive who is to pose as her brother in Paris. Jacques looks harmless enough, but Mary soon realises that all is not well. There is a sudden murder of a guest by an intruder and they have to flee across France, pursued by an unknown number of strangers bent of capturing Jacques. Susanna does a great job of peeling off the layers of the story gradually, and the reader is as mystified as Mary as to what is truly happening and where they are actually bound for. Who is Jacques and why is he a fugitive pursued by the English? Who is the Scottish man, Mr. Macpherson - a murderer or a saviour? Who is Madame Roy? Who, out of these, can Mary really trust?
As the journey progresses and the story unravels, we see Mary growing up as a person - from a young, eager-to-please girl to a poised, confident young woman who is steadfast in her loyalties, convictions and affections. She has the unique ability to weave fairy tales inspired by the tales written by Madame d'Aulnoy, and invents enthralling, magical stories about a Chevalier to keep other passengers travelling with them distracted from her group's true purpose. Before reading this book, I had no idea of the existence of such beautiful fairy tales written primarily by French women writers in the late 1600s and early 1700s.
In the present, Sara too starts realising that she can be herself with Luc and Noah and lets go of her inhibitions. There are not one but two romances in the present, but somehow they did not grab me as much as the poignant relationship between Mary and the one she eventually ends up loving. The development of their relationship is a gradual, slow-burn kind of love, where words are hardly exchanged but every look, every touch is filled with profound meaning. In Mary's own words:
"He watched me from afar when he believed I could not see him. He followed me when he believed that I was not aware of it."
There are several memorable passages in this book, especially towards the end. Here's one I found very touching:
"How do you go from...fixing things, making things work, to --"
He finished the thought for her. "Killing them?"...She had expected his words to be bitter as well, but instead she had heard resignation in his level voice as he'd answered her, low, "Step by step."
"But surely, if you marked the steps as you made them, you could then turn around and retrace them and find your way back to the place you began," she had reasoned. "Like taking the road that you left by, and letting it lead you back home."
He had looked at her quietly. "Home is not always where ye left it."
This phrase stuck me as so true; not always in life can we retrace our steps back to where we were at the beginning of our journey - because circumstances have changed, surroundings have changed, and most importantly, we have changed by then. This is what Mary too realises at the end of her journey - that she cannot get back the relationships that she has lost. But along with that understanding, she also displays remarkable resilience and strength in her willingness to rebuild her life:
She felt a strange kinship with that ancient bridge that was forever being carried off in tiny pieces by the underlying current, and yet did not have the sense to yield, to let go of the shore and simply fall....
"Yet the bridge still stands, and surely every broken thing can be rebuilt."
While the present story is wrapped up quickly, the threads in the past take a bit longer to tie up and it is fitting that the book ends with Mary's thoughts:
Let currents flow and kingdoms fall and time move onward, Mary thought - this moment was for them....It mattered not that no one else would bear that moment witness nor remember it, for if the future could not know them, neither could the past confine them, and the choice was always theirs to make, the tale their own to finish...
Isn't that true for us all?
This seems to be quite a thought provoking read. Yes, Susanna's books do move quite slowly but her writing is so beautiful it kind of compensates for pace. Though, for thriller-addicts like me it needs a particular kind of day and a particular reading phase to truly appreciate her work:) While I was pretty sure I wasn't going to read this one, your review has just accomplished a change of mind! Will read this one, once I finish the Slains' trilogy:)
ReplyDeleteYes, do pick this up when you have two full days of a weekend in hand. It took me almost 5 week days to finish this as I just couldn't rush through it. This is the kind of book that one is incapable of breezing through! The best time to read this is on a long weekend or on a vacation :)
ReplyDeleteBy the way, the Slain's series is actually a duology - both set in during and after the Jacobite rebellion in Scotland. "Winter Sea" takes place first, during the revolution. "The Firebird" takes place immediately afterwards. We are talking of the chronological events in the 18th century here. So it's best you read these two books in that order. "Shadowy Horses" is not really part of this series. It's not technically a past-present book either. It's set in the present and has a real ghost too, unlike the other books. One character in "The Shadowy Horses" is there in the present day story od "The Firebird" and that is the only connection. "The Shadowy Horses" is one of Susanna's earlier works and hence much lighter. You can try that out on a Sunday - that should be enough for it :)
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