BOOK REVIEW: The Lost Carousel of Provence by Juliet Blackwell

This has been a terrible summer for blogging. I have been reading, just not blogging. I’m currently trudging through a doorstop of a history book that I’ll review when I finally finish. I’ve broken that up with working my way through Mary Balogh’s Survivor’s Club series. Two more to go!

In the meantime, I took a break to read a book in my Netgalley queue that was recently released.

(Thank you to Netgalley! I received the book for free. That did not influence my review.)

The Lost Carousel of Provence by Juliet Blackwell is a multi-POV novel set in multiple time periods: early 1900s, WWII, and current day.

Because the early part of the book jumps around so much between characters and time periods, it’s hard to get engaged. In particular, the current day character, Cady, is introduced with both forward moving chapters and chapters that slip into her backstory. Perhaps it’s supposed to give the whirling up-and-down feeling of being on a carousel, but it was frustrating to read at first. The lack of cohesion got tedious. Eventually, the different stories intersected and the novel clicked. This is a novel that rewards patience as it draws to a close as a rich, emotional, multi-generational tale.

Cady Drake is a young female photographer who has difficulty connecting with people, largely due to her foster care upbringing. She was a troubled youth, who was fortunate to find stability living with an older woman, an antique store owner named Maxine. When Maxine dies, Cady is devastated. At the urging of her only friend, Cady embarks on a trip to Paris to photograph carousels for a coffee table book. This idea is inspired by the gift of an old carousel rabbit she had once received from Maxine. Inside the rabbit was a box with a photograph of a young woman from long ago, standing in front of a carousel. Cady becomes obsessed with learning who made the rabbit and the identity of the mysterious woman.

Maelle Tanguy is a young Breton woman in turn-of-the-twentieth-century France. She is a talented sculptor who yearns to make carousel animals. She bravely sets out on her own to apprentice with Monsieur Bayol, the acknowledged master carver. Although he refuses to take her on at first, she impresses him with her spunkiness. He hires her to help his wife with housework, but gradually allows her to take on menial tasks in his workshop, and finally help make the animals. Unfortunately for Maelle, there is a handsome charmer in the workshop, Leon, and she is very gullible.

Finally, there is Fabrice Clement from Provence. During WWII, he was a young resistance fighter in Paris. He survived, barely, to become a writer known for difficult post-modern novels in the war’s aftermath. He then retired to an inherited, falling-apart chateau back in Provence, where he became a cranky recluse.

Fabrice’s chateau was once known for a carousel built for its aristocratic owners by the master Bayol. And, this is the carousel in the photograph Cady found in her rabbit. Maelle is the woman in the photo.

There is a good deal of mystery surrounding all these elements. And the author does a lovely job of piecing it all together. Cady blossoms in France as she never could in her California home.

The novel also beautifully describes the carousel making process in fascinating detail.

I tend to enjoy these types of multi-period novels less than historical novels that follow a more chronological plot line. I don’t like having the flow of a narrative interrupted so frequently. I’m not thrown off by different POV characters so long as their stories are moving in the same direction at the same time, but when the stories are all unconnected for too long, even when I can see that they will eventually connect, I lose patience. That said, I’m glad I stuck with this one until it all came together to its satisfying conclusion.