I was tempted to read this book by its title. Having lived abroad, I have fond memories of Europe and wanted to see if Blackwell’s writing lived up to my memories.
The Lost Carousel of Provence is a complex book in multiple points of view in multiple settings and time frames from the Belle Epoque to World War II to modern day France and California, all tied together with the spandrel of a burnt-out antique carousel. The author handled the shifts in POV well, and I never felt lost or was taken out of the story to re-orient myself. Her descriptions of the landscape and people of Provence are spot-on. Her research on carousels and their restoration was fascinating and her descriptions of carving evoke the desire to pick up a chisel.
Themes of family, what constitutes a family, and what it’s like to have no family run through the book. Cady is a tough orphan from Oakland. She has been given an antique carousel rabbit and goes to France to determine its provenance. A second, very likable character is Maelle Tanguy. In the early 20th century, she serves as the only female assistant to Gustave Bayol, an artisan famous for his carved carousels. Like any good artist, she is driven to be a sculptor, to the point of breaking patriarchal ideas of what a woman should do. Jean-Paul is a Frenchman who befriends Cady in Paris then again in Provence. The most endearing character is the grumpy, irrascible, reclusive Fabrice. He participated in the French Resistance against the Nazis. The threads of their lives come together. He is and century and a tragic story of German occupied France during World War II. All three threads are related and come together as family secrets are unraveled to reveal the truth.
This is a bit of a genre-bending story: mystery, women’s fiction, and romance. The romantic elements are sweet, but minimal, and didn’t overwhelm the rest of the book.
While I enjoyed the ambiguous ending, readers who like a definitive closure to a book may not.
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