The Rose Grower

This was a stunning novel, in every way. I hope Michelle De Kretser is working on another because I'm already waiting in line.Sophie has stayed with me for days and days and I expect she's not going anywhere soon.

This is a great novel, unexpected in the flow of hackneyed romances which has flooded upon the reading public. Oddly, it reminded me in structure of Fitzgerald's TENDER IS THE NIGHT, opening as it does with an American visiting France, an American whom the reader assumes will have great impact on the story to come. Both these books also feature young women of other-worldy beauty and doctors at the cutting edges of their professions. Yet in both these books, the visiting American is no more than an ancillary character, and the style of the stories diverge from there. THE ROSE GROWER begins in a small town in the French countryside on the day that the Bastille has been stormed in Paris. Of course, with the poor communications of that era, the country folk are unaware of the import of the tearing down of the prison. The book continues through the worst years of the French Revolution, the "Terror" as it popularly was known. The revolutionaries evolve into creatures who rival Hitler and Stalin in their cruelties, though the simpler citizens of the countryside are unaware to this prospective impact in the first flush of anti-Royalist excitement. Ms. de Kretser is a lyrical author, as gifted as any of the other modern greats. Each word she chooses is a gem. She writes with a feeling of stillness, of import, of foreboding. She doesn't waste a single sentence. Her heroine, indeed, does grow roses, in order to earn a bit of extra money to assist her long-impoverished aristocratic family. When Ms. de Kretser describes the flowers, her prose is sensual; one even could say sexual. Yet always, in the background, the tumbrels roll. This book deserves to be read by anyone with an appreciation of the art of the novel.

The Rose Grower is a historical novel that unfolds as languorously and luxuriously as the petals of any flower, revealing first one complexity, then another. Although the story is interesting, it is De Kretser's lush and voluptuous prose that ultimately seduces us, opening our senses and pulling us into the world of the novel.The story beings on 14 July 1789, the day of the storming of the Bastille. In the little village of Montsignac, in southwestern France, a man literally falls from the sky, marking the beginning of change for the once aristocratic Saint-Pierre family.Stephen Fletcher, the wounded balloonist who fell from the sky regains consciousness on the Saint-Pierre's sofa and immediately falls in love with the eldest daughter of the family, the vain and beautiful Claire. For Stephen, it was a coup de foudre as he calls his first vision of Claire, "the lightening flash which reveals the lay of the land between a man and woman." Complications, however, ensue. Claire is married to the rich and pompous Hubert de Monferrant and they have a son.The youngest sister, Mathilde, a brilliant and precocious eight-year-old, is also smitten with Stephen and he quickly becomes her hero. Rounding out the trio, is Sophie, the plain, almost unnoticed, serious middle daughter, considered an old maid at the age of twenty-two. Sophie, too, feels passion for Stephen, and she lavishes this passion on her gardening, more specifically on her efforts to bring forth a truly crimson rose, a unique and special specimen. "In eighteenth-century France, crimson roses do not exist. There are red-purple roses, of course, and rosy-red, and a sumptuous deep pink overclouded with plum and mulberry. None of which will do."This book is more than a love story, however. This is France during the time of the Revolution and the country is seething with political unrest. An idealistic young doctor named Joseph Morel is drawn into Sophie's world when he is invited to dinner at the Saint-Pierre's. A member of a group of revolutionaries nearly as elitist as the monarchy they are trying to overthrow, Morel will have a profound influence over both Sophie and the entire Saint-Pierre family.As love flourishes, the horror of the Revolution increases. A convent which has been converted into a holding jail for traitors becomes the site of a massacre and it is Monsieur Saint-Pierre who has the bad fortune of discovering the carnage. As Saint-Pierre begins to investigate the gruesome murders, Claire's husband jeopardizes the entire family's safety by becoming a counterrevolutionary, fighting on the side of the monarchy.The Rose Grower is a sweeping historical saga with a large cast of characters whose lives are intricately interlaced. But it is De Krester's eye for detail that captures our attention in this complex and multi-layered story. This author brilliantly captures the very essence of the meals, the scent of the flowers, the conversations. The air of the past is broug

I really enjoyed this novel. The characters were well described, and the action seemed realistic to me (although I'm ignorant of history). The pretty and descriptive, but not flowery, writing was entertaining and I was most definitely transported to France. If you liked Chocolat and God of Small Things (like me) you might enjoy this book.

Flowers, French food, medicine, politics, wit, humor, gentility, violence, revolution, poignancy, yearning, choices, false loves and true ones. This book offers all, and more. The layers of relationships in this story are like the layered petals of the historic roses that inspire heroine Sophie to hybridize a re-blooming crimson rose, something unknown in the 1790's. The beauties and subtleties of THE ROSE GROWER are numerous. The writing is sublime.I was terribly disappointed to learn this is a first novel. I would so much like to read other works by Michelle de Kretser--and hope to have that pleasure in the not too distant future.