BOOK: Victorine

AUTHOR: Catherine Texler

SUMMARY: Catherine Texier takes this evocative narrative, from her family's past and draws a portrait of the unaccounted years in the life of her great-grandmother,Victorine. Rumor said that she had run off with an old teenaged boyfriend. The setting is one day in 1940 with flashbacks to the end of the nineteenth century. This transition between past and present is very smooth. It spans 2 continents and a number of the narrator's emotions. Texier moves smoothly between past and present showing the conflict between her main character's two entirely different lifestyles. The tensions of marriage and motherhood are described with a sense of remorse. The author shows us how Victorine travels to another place so that she can reinvent herself. The author describes her life as a ravine. Her husband, children and work as a teacher on one side, and "On the other side, a man who makes her dream, a man who embodies freedom and adventure, a man who opens the world to her." Travel to the Mekong delta reveals the hot, humid, climate as well as a sense of both history and place. There is even some mention of the opium trade in relationship to the French tax. I could feel her gradual transition into this environment.

PLOT: This book opens in 1940 in a small French town on the Atlantic. As Victorine waits for her son to escort her as she moves from her home, her history unfolds. We see her as a young teenager meeting Antoine at the beach. She becomes the youngest teacher in France. After marrying Armand and having two children, she meets Antoine again in her small town of Vendee. He has become a customs officer with a post in Indochina. And gives her an invitation she can not turn down. She is an intelligent, headstrong woman looking in at her own life. She doesn't make decisions, she simply acts not knowing what will happen. Following this short span in the life of Victorine is quite interesting and keeps the reader wondering…What if?