Book Review: "Sepulchre" by Kate Mosse

“Sepulchre” is the second offering by British author Kate Mosse. The book parallels the lives of Leonie, a young French woman living in 1891 Paris, and Meredith Martin, a young American woman visiting France in the early 21st century to research a biography she is writing about composer Claude Debussy, as well as her own mysterious family heritage.
I should have loved this book. Setting is almost as important to me as character, and in “Sepulchre,” Mosse revisits Carcassonne, territory she first trod in “Labyrinth,” now in paperback. Both books weave together two time periods to great effect. Like setting, the device of parallel characters in different time periods, known as time-slip, is a favorite of mine. Another favorite thing of mine is the Tarot cards (the Empress in this blog title refers to the Empress card in the Tarot.), which are featured prominently in “Sepulchre,” adding to the reasons I should have really loved this book. And yet …
Let’s begin in 1891. “Sepulchre” begins in a cemetery following the supposed death of the mistress of Anatole, Leonie’s brother. It takes a while into the book before that scene makes sense as the starting point of the book, but the death of Anatole’s lover is at the heart of the drama. It takes a while for the action of the book to get moving, which doesn’t really find its feet until an invitation arrives for Anatole and Leonie to visit their late uncle’s widow, Isolde, at her estate, Domain de la Cade, near the spa town of Rennes-les-Bains in southwest France. Leonie notices strange behavior on the part of her brother, who leaves a trail of misinformation and makes switchbacks on their journey out of Paris. We know he is being pursued, but we don’t know why or by whom. When the pair finally arrives safely at Domain de la Cade, we know too that Anatole’s relationship with their widowed aunt is more than familial. The reader surmises this, but it takes Leonie a ridiculous amount of time to catch on. Actually, she never does, but instead has to have the nature of the relationship spelled out for her by Anatole. Don’t be thinking incest here though: Aunt Isolde is the much younger wife of Leonie and Anatole’s uncle. Isolde’s relationship to her late husband was one of convenience and companionship rather than love and adoration.
While Meredith Martin is visiting Paris in the present day, a chance Tarot reading reveals more about herself than about her research subject, Claude Debussy, and firms her resolve to visit Rennes-les-Bains and research the unknown history of her birth family. With the deck of Tarot cards in hand, Meredith leaves Paris and becomes a guest at the Hotel Domain de la Cade. She immediately begins seeing strange visions of a young, copper-haired woman with green eyes who appears to be urging her to act. She later learns the woman’s identity—Leonie Vernier. She comes to realize that uncovering the mystery of Leonie might well answer Meredith’s own questions about her family.
Mosse’s descriptions of the town and countryside surroundings of Rennes-les-Bains are amazingly vivid, capturing the feel of the place as well as its beauty. The region should hire her as head of its tourism division, because I want nothing so much now as to visit the area. This setting and Mosse’s descriptions of it are what kept me reading the book. I must say here that of course, I listened to the unabridged audio version of the book. I found the narrator’s voice captivating, both in “Sepulchre” and in “Labyrinth,” and now I want to learn to speak French. A few characters from the earlier book make an appearance in “Sepulchre,” though it isn’t necessary to have read “Labyrinth” first. It’s just a nice spark of recognition when you remember that you’ve met this or that character before.
The book’s troubles begin when while visiting Carcassonne for a concert, Leonie defies her brother’s strict entreaty that she remain nearby. In a turn all too common for Mosse’s heroines, and all too infuriating for Mosse’s readers, Leonie ignores her brother’s warnings. For what purpose? So that she can be the feisty young heroine I suppose. She gets caught in a storm and takes shelter in a church, where the charming yet dangerous Victor, who we learn is the book’s villain, finds her and gleans from her information that will lead him to Isolde, with whom he had a previous affair, an affair so horrific and devastating that Isolde and Anatole saw no escape except to fake Isolde’s death—the opening scene in the cemetery.
I can think of at least five other plot devices, all of them less contrived and more believable, to get Victor to the Domain De La Cade and thereby heighten the tension, that don’t leave Leonie looking like an irredeemable ditz. I recalled this same plot device being employed in Labyrinth, and it nearly ruined that story for me as well. In my opinion, the character of Leonie never recovered from the author’s mishandling of her in that scene. Contrivances abound in this book, both in character motivation and in dialogue.
The sepulchre that gives the book its title is an ancient Visigoth sepulchre on the grounds of the Domain de la Cade that is rumored to have housed a demon that was once released into the countryside by Isolde’s late husband. The sepulchre is the stage for the final showdown between Leonie and Victor, a showdown that occurs after nearly everything is lost to Leonie. In Meredith’s time, the current owner of the Hotel Domain De La Cade, Julian Lawrence, has spent his fortune searching for the original Tarot cards that will lead him to the Visigoth treasure that is thought to be buried on the hotel grounds. He is an evil, twisted man as well, the modern incarnation of Victor.
Meredith must race against time to find the cards before Julian does. It is the only way she can save herself and free Leonie from her ghostly existence.
“Sepulchre” held my interest, albeit with no small amount of eye rolling. In the end, my recommendation is that if you like France as a setting, haunting ghost stories, and epic tales of intrigue, you will like this book. Just don’t let your expectations run away with you. I suggest getting it in paperback though or borrowing it from the library. Its shortcomings make it unlikely to be a favorite reread.

Shopping and Other Tortures

I went shopping with my mother yesterday. Shopping is tops on my "things I desperately loathe" list. For starters, I am extremely hard to fit. I hear a lot of women saying that, so I'm starting to think that most of us aren't so very hard to fit, we just don't fit into the fashion industry's narrow ()literally and figuratively) idea of what a woman's body is like. I mean, women have boobs and hips. It's natural. It isn't something we should be ashamed of or work endlessly and tirelessly to change. Boobs and hips serve a purpose. I'd really love to get some acknowledgement of that fact from fashion designers. Personally, I am short and curvy. Yeah, let's go with curvy. I like my curves. I really do have an hourglass figure—it's just that I've got way too much sand in the bottom. I have what my Aunt Alice calls "birthing hips." Lucky me. I also have legs like tree trunks. Is it any wonder I hate shopping? But I have two weddings coming up, my sister's and Michael's sisters, so new clothes were a necessity.
There are certain obvious pitfalls to clothes shopping with one's mother. If we were shopping for furniture or curtains or home decor, she is the go-to woman, but clothes? Not so much. Mom shows me things like denim skirts, and says "But you love denim skirts." Yeah, when I was thirteen maybe. And she shows me pink, ruffley things, and skirts with floral prints. She means well, but ... Well, I'm not really a floral print kind of woman. That's hard to explain to the person who refuses to think of you as anything other than her little girl. And since I'm blind, I have to rely on the opinions of others to a fairly alarming degree. Also because I'm blind, texture matters, and let me just tell you, I have expensive taste in texture.
Fortunately, I did end up finding something that will work for both weddings. I found a nicely tailored black skirt, and a fine-gauge cardigan sweater with bell sleeves and lace trim. It is okay to wear black to weddings these days, isn't it? No wait, don't tell me. I already bought the outfit, so I don't want to know.
Now I just have to find some kind of top to go under the sweater, preferably something in a bright color like red or pink, and some shoes. Oh and pantyhose. Ugh, pantyhose.
In other, totally unrelated news, Saturday was the 700th anniversary of the Vatican's purge of the Knights Templar. I believe the Vatican has since decided that the Templar's weren't heretics after all. Oops. I'm sure that's real comforting to all those who were roasted alive or drawn and quartered. The Vatican, you gotta love 'em.
I gotta tell you, I do love Templar history. I admit to being a sucker for the current Templar action/suspense subgenre spawned by the success of the DaVinci Code. If it says secret society, Holy Grail, or papal history, you can bet it's going home with me.
Today, I begin my 70 Days of Sweat writing Challenge. It will be grueling because I am a slow writer, but it will teach me about time management and effective scheduling. I know, that's a lot to ask of 70 days.

Thursday Thirteen-- Favorite Books

I realize that I am posting this on Wednesday, but there's a reason, and it's a tale of two computers, one of which hates Blogger.
I have always been a reader. By the time I was four years old, I had Alice in Wonderland (the Little Golden Book version) memorized cover to cover, and still, I demanded that it be read to me every night at bedtime. That love of books has never waned. I have always understood the power of a good story. Many books have touched me, but the ones listed below are the ones that set up shop and will live with me forever.

1. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
2. The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy
3. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
4. The Harry Potter series by J.K. rowling
5. Persuasion by Jane Austen
6. Bridget Jones's diary by Helen fielding
7. Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason by Helen Fielding
8. Outlander by Diana Gabaldon-- but only the first three quarters. Dragonfly in Amber and Voyager, the next two books in the series, are also excellent.
9. The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
11. The Lords of Discipline by Pat Conroy
12. The Stephanie Plum novels by Janet Evanovich
13. Ahab's Wife by Sena Jeter Naslund

R.I.P. Robert Jordan

In his bestselling Wheel of Time series, Robert Jordan proved that the imagination is limitless. In spite of that, he fearlessly probed its edges and sought its boundaries. He refused to be shackled by the confines of history or convention. Through his books, I spent countless hours in exotic places with people who were both real and yet far more than real. The best authors have that ability to distort your perception of time and place, making you come out of their books dazed and blinking, wondering where that world you were just in had vanished to. The best stories are the ones that become, at least for a time, more real than your living room. Those are the stories Robert Jordan wrote, the stories that find a place inside you where they stay forever.
The Wheel of Time series is unfinished, and will remain so-- at least by the man who created it. Internet rumor is that he left notes for its completion, and I hope that is the case. He died on Sunday in South Carolina.
Farewell Robert Jordan, and thank you. May you always find water and shade.

My Contribution to the Harry Potter Lovefest

Michael and I finished reading the seventh and final Harry Potter book (on audio of course) late Sunday night. If you are an HP fan, then you've already finished it and I don't have to tell you how amazing it was. It was everything we fans thought it would be, and more than we ever even knew we could hope for. Sure, we want to know more, but we will always want more. The Potter books are the foundation for an entertainment empire. They added countless words to our language in a way that hasn't been done since William Shakespeare. They brought millions of completely different people-- different in belief, age, culture, etc.-- together and gave them something to talk about. The books gave us a world to visit again and again and know that we can escape our own world and be completely immersed in the magical one. All of this sharing and bringing together and outpouring of the full spectrum of emotions is the result of one thing-- one woman's imagination. And therein lies the magic, the most amazing and powerful magic. Thank you J.K. Rowling.