Monday, May 19, 2014

Fair Exchange by Michèle Roberts

The story opens with a confession.  Fearing she is about to die, Louise Daudry, a French peasant woman calls for the priest to tell him her secret.  In order to confess she needs to start her tale from the beginning.  The story, told from different narrative points of view, is about the consequences of one foolish act.   The imagery of food and French rural life is fantastic, although I felt the story could have gone deeper.   I wanted to know more about the time the story was set, i.e. the French Revolution.  I also felt the characters were too modern for the setting and not as fully formed as they could have been.  The story was inspired by the lives and the affairs of Mary Wollstonecraft and William Wordsworth. I read Daughters of the House by Michele Roberts a few years ago and I preferred that book to this one.  

No comments:

Post a Comment