When life gets tough, our initial instinct is to want to run away. A change of scenery and a new focus will cure what’s ailing us. But the truth is, you can’t run away from yourself. Instead, you have to work things out so that you can live in peace no matter where you are or what you’re doing.
Author Tracy Wise explores the attempt to change external factors in order to cure internal struggles in her book, Madame Sorel’s Lodger. Below is my review of the book as well as my interview with Wise about her work. Then, enter to win a paperback copy via the Rafflecopter form below!
Madame Sorel’s Lodger plot summary
In the late 1800s, a struggling artist arrives in a small French town and rents a room from the stern and bitter widow, Madame Sorel. Hoping to find inspiration to create and sell a few paintings or at least hold out until a sale comes through from Paris, the Artist, spends his days painting in the countryside and looking for potential buyers.
As the months progress, the Artist’s mental health declines, much to the worry of the local townspeople who have grown close to him, particularly Madame Sorel’s good-natured brother, Luc, and her young, lowly housekeeper, Gretchen. As the events that unfold grow more and more familiar, the reader begins to realize just whose story they’re reading and what it means for the Artist and the resolution of his conflicts, both internal and external.
The story
Madame Sorel’s Lodger is a short, yet detailed and slow-paced read which is rich in detail, description, and character development. It was a story that demanded that a speed reader like me slow down and absorb every sentence and nuance and match my pacing with the slow-burn pacing of the story.
The novel feels like you’re reading a classic with its very matter of fact yet very personal third-person narrator who can dive off the shoulders of the characters and delve deep into their psyches, motivations, and response to the developing plot. It has a very uncertain tone which matches the Artist’s bold decision to uproot himself and take a chance to improve his circumstances. However, there’s a constant teetering over whether the slow, quiet country living or the opportunistic and progressive city life is better for him.
The characters
The characters in this story are well-drawn and three dimensional. They each have their own roles to play, but they are also very much their own people with different motivations, aspirations, and longings.
The small town is not a utopia as much as a livable place with low expectations and a tight-knit community where everyone knows their place and the roles they have to play to keep it working. Madame Sorel herself is more of a minor character in the scheme of things. She’s not nice, but she has her moments of kindness, and it’s always interesting to see how her words and actions will compare and contrast with each other.
I also particularly liked Gretchen and her curiosity towards the Artist. She definitely craves the subversive and the way the Artist shakes things up in the small town. This is also the case with Luc who is inspired by the Artist’s painting style and his point of view, and he in turn inspires the Artist as well.
My recommendation
I recommend Madame Sorel’s Lodger to anyone looking for a short read who wants to be transported into a descriptive, pastoral world. That being said, there is some intensity to the book, and you should brace for that intensity. But Wise treats this content with authenticity and respect. She doesn’t glorify mental illness, nor does she it sugarcoat it. Instead, she captures it through a raw and realistic lens.
I admit, the middle of the book did become a bit slow to me, but then it picked up at the end. And luckily, because it is short, the slow parts were short lived.
I’ve been very guarded about spoiling anything, but it should become apparent to the reader as they go on as to whose story they’re reading. I like that Wise chose never to blow that secret wide open, even in an afterward or any type of note, but she still made it apparent and let her dramatization of this story speak for itself.
My rating
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An interview with Tracy Wise
What was the most fun part of writing this book? The most challenging?
The most fun was sitting at my keyboard and seeing, in my mind’s eye, this place and these characters live their lives in front of me. The most challenging was writing the scene of the Artist’s breakdown at Madame Bertrand’s—I avoided it until my most trusted early reader, my fellow writer (a screenwriter and playwright) and cousin, Cindy, said, “Tracy, you have to write this scene.”
In your bio, it states that you have a background in theatre and opera. Did either of these disciplines help you to craft this story?
Absolutely. Both of these disciplines sharpened my ear, as a writer, to the sound, rhythm, and pace of language. In other words, how to listen to and hear the music that is present in speech and in writing.
The Artist is never named in the book, though his real-life inspiration grows increasingly more obvious as the story unfolds. Is it your intention to reveal it as more of a surprise for the reader as they turn the pages, or is it something you don’t mind being revealed before readers start reading?
In thinking about 19th century art and artists, we are so saturated in the life of Van Gogh these days that he has become a part of our collective unconscious. So, absolutely, I drew on him and his life for my inspiration.
But I deliberately chose not to name him because this is not intended as any sort of biography or “life of” a specific individual. I wanted to be free to wonder and explore how a Van Gogh-like artist saw things, how that shaped how he interacted with other people, and what drove him. And, then, how someone like that would impact those around him, and how they would impact him.
Ultimately, I found I was exploring questions about friendship and community and creativity, and that became the heart of the story for me. It is purely speculative and, apart from my initial inspiration for the Artist himself, everyone else is someone I made up, as is the town of A–. So, my only hesitancy in revealing the inspiration for the Artist beforehand is that people will assume it is some type of factually recounted life that is meant to be historically accurate, when it isn’t.
Have you ever been to the south of France? If so, what moments of your real experience did you incorporate into your book? If not, how were you able to craft such detailed descriptions of the area?
I was briefly in Avignon for a day, a very windy day, and left with the soil of the surrounding area embedded in my scalp, my ears, up my nose…. But, otherwise, my only visits have been through books I have read or films I have seen. So, you could say that my descriptions are a testament to a love of reading widely.
Do you have a favorite character? A favorite moment?
I feel very protective and possessive of the Artist; I feel as if he is “mine,” in some way. I love the moments when he and Luc are teasing one another. And I love when Gretchen dunks his head in the basin and she leaves his room feeling triumphant that she has put this man in his place.
If you could spend a few months in this town and in this era, how would you use the time? Who do you think you would most associate with?
I know I would like to spend some time hanging out in Monsieur Philippe’s workroom, watching the men build and smelling that gorgeous smell of sawdust. It would be like being in my grandfather’s woodworking workshop again.
I would also love to sit at the scrubbed wooden table in Madame Sorel’s kitchen and eat freshly baked bread. And I would like to sit beside Luc’s stream, take off my shoes and socks, and dabble my toes in the water.
And I would simply love to watch everyone living there, going about their regular day. Heaven.
Did you draw inspiration from any other novels or writers?
Absolutely. I am a writer because I have been a reader.
Some recent writers I resonate strongly with and have loved their work include: Edward Carey (for Little in particular), Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, Maggie O’Farrell, Julie Otsuka, Sarah Winman, and Alice Winn.
When I first read Penelope Fitzgerald’s The Blue Flower years ago, it grabbed me powerfully, and I saw how much might be contained within a slim volume. And I have loved and read all of Barbara Pym’s novels.
Nineteenth century novelists were also hugely important to my reading education: Dickens, Brontë, Gaskell, Trollope. Even Stoker. Some of Amitav Ghosh’s writing that I have read has the same wild, rollicking energy of Dickens.
And I owe a huge debt to the regular reading of all forms of poetry from a wide array of voices. Reading poetry is the best therapy for the modern world that there is, IMHO. Even when some of it makes you want to flinch and turn away.
What do you want readers to take away from Madame Sorel’s Lodger?
The thing about Van Gogh’s art being so omnipresent in our lives is that the reader is able, I hope, to imagine what they are seeing as a Van Gogh painting (even though it might be something he never actually painted). I want them to be able to sit down for a few minutes and slip away to a place where people are messy and human and in which they, as a reader, can feel a part of, even if it is just for a little while.
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