By Jessie Tu
FICTION
Dreaming in French
Vanessa McCausland
HarperCollins, $32.99
Francophiles make great fictional characters. They’re dreamers, food-lovers, artists and passionate lovers.
In Dreaming in French, Vanessa McCausland’s fourth book, our Francophile is a 45-year-old woman named Saskia. One day, she receives a letter that contains a will from a lawyer in France. Her long-forgotten friend, Simone Durant, has died and left Saskia half her grand villa on the island of Ile de Re off the west coast of France. The other half she has left to a man named Felix.
Saskia’s husband yelps in delight. Their two teenage daughters yearn to see the country. For Saskia, though, this letter brings back a trauma she thought she had left behind. When she was 19, she dropped out of law school and escaped to the island. She wanted to become an artist. She wanted to be unbounded by obligation, responsibilities and routine labour.
Vanessa McCausland captures the heady delirium of a European summer love affair.Credit:
Saskia gets a job au-pairing for a wealthy couple’s daughter, Juliette. During their long, heady days in the summer heat, they encounter two strangers who befriend them – Felix, a salt harvester, and Simone, an elusive, troubled orphan, who is still grieving the loss of her parents.
They all want something different from their lives. All yearn for a freedom that seems impossible at 19. All want to be released from the burden of their pedigrees.
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Felix is an aspiring actor whose family expects him to never leave the island — to spend his entire life harvesting salt as they did. The guilt eats him alive: “You see how it is difficult for me to leave behind this knowledge. It feels like I am letting my family down.” Saskia has left her law degree behind in Sydney, disappointing her mother: “We never had any money, and I abandoned it all and came here to chase my dreams of being an artist.”
Simone is heir to one of the country’s wealthiest cosmetic companies. She, too, has her problems: “I don’t know if anyone truly loves me for who I am,” she laments. She blames herself for her parent’s volatile marriage. And even in his death, Simone must live under the shadow of her father – a famous philosopher.
Revisiting the island now in her early middle age, Saskia is surprised by the weight of her buried trauma – all those years ago, the child in her care had gone missing. Now, she must confront the impact of that tragedy. She must find Felix and seek answers to her reluctant questions.
McCausland’s book captures the heady delirium of a European summer love — where the heat and sex is fervent and sweet. The book is interested in exploring the devastating loss of youth, though never allows its characters to drown themselves in sentimentality or melodrama.
Saskia’s husband is a biting and satisfying villain – and her slow, dawning campaign to wean herself off his bitterness is balanced well within the frame of the story.
At times, perhaps a little too often, the author gets in the way of her own characters. She over-explains their feelings and thoughts – it’s the equivalent to running a 100-metre race while laying out hurdles in front of yourself.
Nevertheless, McCausland eventually relaxes her pen, letting the story and its mysteries carry readers through to the end. Ultimately, what saves our heroine is not her ability to overcome her trauma. It is her ability to hold on to her past without shame, self-judgment or terror. Dignity trumps all, and she has her daughters to remind her of that.
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