Simon & Schuster, 2015.
Five Stars
As with all of Alice Hoffman’s novels, her poetic descriptions are
melodic and lyrical right from the first line. Her storytelling and world-building
are so powerful that the story pulls you in immediately, and she has a talent
for making the reader feel like you are right there in the story. It is like you
are being told a fairy tale as you fall asleep, where the lines blur between
fantasy and reality.
The best historical novels make history personal, so we can absorb
factual information in the context of a story. With that in mind, The Marriage
of Opposites is certainly a success. This is (partly) a fictionalized biography
of the painter Camille Pissarro, yet it is almost wholly focused on the life of
his mother, Rachel. He is almost a minor character in his own life, eclipsed by
the strength and passion of his mother, whose unorthodox decisions made him
what he was.
Rachel and Camille both struggle to fit in to their families and to the
larger community of the island of St. Thomas, which seems at first to be open
to many different cultures and spiritual beliefs. However, there is a limit to
the tolerance on the island, and a hierarchy of rights within the overall
system of justice. Rachel’s family, the Pomies, are Jews who are transplanted
on St. Thomas like the apple tree they carry with them. Fleeing from
persecution across Europe, they struggle to survive in the new climate. Plants
also serve as a metaphor for storytelling: “There is the outside of a story,
and there is the inside of a story…One is the fruit and may be delicious, but
the other is the seed.” (P. 11). The seed is the truth, and the fables which
Rachel’s father shares with her are in fact cautionary tales.
Rachel grows up with openness to all cultures – her island home is a
refuge for persecuted religions, including Jews, Mennonites, Moravians, and freed
African slaves. She records the stories of the people around her, seeking the
truth of the island. However, as she grows older, she is less tolerant of her
son Camille’s beliefs. His positive experience at the Moravian school of his
youth is a precursor to his eventual belief in anarchism. It was so frustrating
to see Rachel change and refuse to accept Camille’s lifestyle when it was so
similar to her own youth. Camille makes many of the same choices that Rachel
did, and yet she condemns him. In trying to protect Camille from her own fate,
in which she was shunned from the Jewish community, she only manages to isolate
herself from her son and grandchildren.
Hoffman’s use of magic realism was most present in the romantic love
stories of this novel. Love is referred to as an enchantment, unavoidable and irresistible.
As Rachel falls in love with her young husband with an almost manic intensity,
so too is Camille swept away by a love deemed inappropriate by society. Curses
and charms are dispatched almost casually, causing more suffering in love than
happiness.
Before meeting his eventual wife, Camille finds his own happiness in
painting. The island around him serves as inspiration, but he is interested in
painting more than just the landscape. Camille wishes to truly see what is
around him, “to see what was there, but also what was underneath flesh and
blood, core and pit, leaf and stem.” (p. 191). His wish to see the truth when
painting is like his mother’s wish to access the seed, or truth, of a story. They
are so alike and yet they cannot understand each other. It was incredible to be
able to read this psychological approach to Pissarro’s painting style, and to
understand how his contribution to Impressionist painting stemmed from his
vision of the world as a puzzle: “the pieces dissolved inside my mind so that I
then could put them back together to form a whole.” (p. 191). Even more
meaningful was the importance of the legacy Rachel left for her son, and how
the choices we all make affect those we love, for generations to come.
I received this novel from Netgalley, Goodreads First Reads and Simon
& Schuster in exchange for an honest review.
No comments:
Post a Comment