Customer Reviews

The Coral Thief

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

By the time I had read this novel, I'd already seen that it had hit the trifecta of book reviews--starred reviews in Publisher's Weekly, Booklist, and Kirkus. Further, the reviewers had all commented on the novel's mix of science, history, romance, and mystery. All I could think is, "I've got to read this book!" Ah, but raised expectations are a brutal thing. Rebecca Stott addresses the issue herself:

"It depends," I said, "On your expectations. Whether they are low or high."
"Oh, my expectation are, I believe, unusually high."
"Well, then, many things will not be as good as they seem."

And that was my experience exactly. I think that had I come to The Coral Thief with no expectations whatsoever, I would have enjoyed it more.

The novel opens with 21-year-old protagonist Daniel Connor on his way to Paris from his home in Edinburgh. The year is 1815. Napoléon has just been defeated at Waterloo. And Daniel Connor is striking out on his own for the first time to continue his medical and scientific studies at the renowned Jardin des Plantes with the famed Dr. Cuvier. He comes bearing gifts of rare coral specimens, a translated manuscript, and letters of recommendation from his former professor.

As he travels by mail coach, Daniel meets a most extraordinary woman. It takes him a while, in the dark, to realize that she is quite beautiful, though she's about twice his age. She speaks knowledgeably, if controversially, about science. She is like no one he has ever known. When he awakes in the morning, the woman is gone. So is the bag containing his specimens and the rest of the precious items in his charge. Oddly, she's gone out of her way to leave his money.

Despondent, Daniel reports the theft to the French police, a more harrowing endeavor than one might expect. It is there he learns that his thief is Lucienne Bernard. In his desperation to retrieve the lost items, he becomes increasingly entangled with Lucienne and her colleagues. Ultimately, after a meandering start, The Coral Thief resolves itself into a May/December romance and a heist caper.

There's a great deal to like about this novel. Foremost for me was the novel's setting. It was a fascinating time and place. In the wake of major political upheaval, the world was on the brink of a scientific revolution that would change the way we think forever. The characters in this novel are the players in this sea change in thinking. I was so interested in this pivotal time and place, I found myself somewhat frustrated--a rare incidence of me wanting more fact and less fiction. Though it must be said that Rebecca Stott did a really terrific job relaying the significance of the events unfolding.

My biggest problem--and it's a biggie--was with the protagonist, Daniel. He was young, naïve, and frankly didn't have a whole lot to offer. I'm close to Lucienne's age, and all I could think is, What could she ever see in this kid? (Clearly I've failed my cougar test.) And young or not, Daniel is kind of an idiot. He risks so much for a woman of suspect motives. I wanted to slap him. But I did like that Stott addresses some of my conflict directly:

"Why did Daniel Connor take this path rather than the one he was supposed to take, what Rev. Samuels would call the righteous path, the one that went with Cuvier, with hard work, apprenticeship, patronage, the one that would almost certainly lead to success? Why instead did he take the path that led into the muddy and shadowy labyrinths with the heretics and the thieves? You'd have to ask him that. I am no longer that Daniel Connor. That one, that boy, is many Daniels ago."

The book is fairly short, but I have to admit it took me far too long to read. My failure to connect with the characters was a big impediment. Still, some of what Stott's written is so wonderful--such as the haunting story of how Lucienne du Luc became Lucienne Bernard--that it's hard to even suggest anyone miss it. If you have any interest in the time, place, or subjects being addressed, The Coral Thief is well worth a look.

If Rebecca Stott's goal was to create a vivid feel of Paris after the Napoleonic wars, this novel is a complete success. As for the plot and characters she builds this vibrant setting around, they definitely take a backseat in her vivid re-creation. Her story starts as an intriguing mystery novel, young scientist Daniel Connor heads to Paris to study with the greats in a nexus of brilliant and important thought of the day, Paris. On the train into town, he is near hypnotized by a beautiful stranger, and ends up having some priceless fossils stolen from him. When he tries to recover his items, he meets the Police Chief, a corrupt and former master thief who has his own agenda concerning this robbery. The novel quickly morphs into a caper story with who is using whom elements.

This narrative is interspersed with an imagined tale of Napoleon's journey to exile which Stott doesn't even bother to connect to the story in any real way beyond a few casual comments. Its almost as if you are watching a an Oceans Elevens/Departed type movie and your spouse keeps changing the channel to an documentary on Napoleon's exile and Post Revolutionary Paris. You don't get bored with one program or the other, but the mixture feels somewhat bumpy at best. The plot seems heavily contrived and the romantic scenes lack heat. Daniel Connor also makes one inexpiable decision after another which doesn't help.

The writing however is great, and Stott consistently uses several phrases that light up. The Police Chief (who is based on fact in a stranger then fiction turn), and some of the scenes that describe Revolutionary violence are the story's fabulous and moving highlights.

Post-Napoleonic Paris seethes with intrigue, daring scientific ideas and lawlessness. The head of the police is a former thug, the dread and fear of The Terror still linger and the intelligentsia scheme to hold onto the art and artifacts looted by Napoleon.

Into this heady maelstrom comes the naïve, ambitious narrator, English medical student Daniel Connor, fresh from the University of Edinburgh, to study anatomy with the great Cuvier at the Jardin des Plantes.

But on the coach to Paris young Connor meets a beautiful older woman, Lucienne Bernard, an intellectual who fills his head with the exciting and heretical ideas of another Jardin des Plantes scientist, Lamarck, precursor to Darwin. Beguiled by the woman, Connor falls asleep and wakes to find the precious fossils and papers he was to deliver to Cuvier have been stolen.

Without them his budding career is at an end. Connor reports the theft, but the menacing head of police, M. Jagot, proves more ruthless than the beautiful thief. Jagot has a personal vendetta against Bernard and her circle of outlaw intelligentsia and he's perfectly willing to bring down Connor along with them.

An affair naturally ensues between the mysterious Bernard and the young man and Connor soon becomes entangled in her fate. He also excels at his new duties assisting Cuvier's catalogue of nature, while carousing most nights with his fellow student or Bernard, drinking and talking of the new philosophy of evolution.

Stott's writing is visual and eloquent. She brings the intellectual excitement of the era alive as well as the post-Napoleonic letdown and unrest and the lingering paranoia of The Terror.

The book's problems stem from the narration. Connor tells this story of his youth from the vantage point of age, creating a distance that renders the youthful passion flat, almost unbelievable. This remove also lessens suspense, making the story more intellectual than involving.

Still, this is a beautifully written novel, which illuminates the beginnings of evolution's ascendancy, and the religious and philosophical questions that gripped people in a time of political and scientific upheaval.

UPDATE: I couldn't finish this book. I lost interest because I kept wondering if I was reading words "borrowed" from other writers. I'll leave my original review as-is, including the 4-star rating. But I'm disappointed that the story lost its charm for me.

ORIGINAL REVIEW:
I'm still reading this book and will update my review later. I think it is a good story, written well, and so far I don't have much else to say about it one way or the other.

But a few chapters into the story, I came across a paragraph that seemed to ring a bell. Here is that entire paragraph. The setting is the Louvre; the narrator is trying to make himself understood by the thief, Mme. Beranard:

"She didn't respond. She was watching a woman dressed in gray who was sitting nearby. Her long cloak, fastened at the neck, was thrown back from her arms, and one beautiful ungloved hand pillowed her cheek. Her white bonnet made a halo around her braided dark brown hair. She was not looking at the paintings; her large eyes were fixed dreamily on a streak of sunlight that fell across the floor."

My immediate reaction to this passage was that it seemed more lyrical, and yet more arbitrary, than the matter-of-fact prose that had led up to it. Then I recognized its similarity to a scene in George Eliot's "Middlemarch", when Ladislaw and a friend, in a museum gallery, take stealthy notice of the heroine Dorothea's beauty. I was pleased to think that Mrs. Stott was alluding to this quite arresting scene, perhaps even hinting that her own novel, set around the same time as Middlemarch, obliquely overlapped the other story for a passing moment. Was that Dorothea, making a cameo appearance in The Coral Thief?

However, once I found the passage in Chapter 19 of Middlemarch, the coincidence quickly lost its charm. The wording struck me as just too similar. You be the judge:

"They were just in time to see another figure standing against a pedestal near the reclining marble: a breathing blooming girl, whose form, not shamed by the Ariadne, was clad in Quakerish grey drapery; her long cloak, fastened at the neck, was thrown backward from her arms, and one beautiful ungloved hand pillowed her cheek, pushing somewhat backward the white beaver bonnet which made a sort of halo to her face around the simply braided dark-brown hair. She was not looking at the sculpture, probably not thinking of it: her large eyes were fixed dreamily on a streak of sunlight which fell across the floor."

That scene from Middlemarch is set in Rome, not Paris, but the woman, the streak of sunlight, and most of the the actual words are the same. I don't understand why Ms. Stott lifted such a distinctive passage from such a well-known book from nearly 150 years ago, considered by some to be the greatest English novel. I'll give her the benefit of the doubt and conclude that she indeed was giving a tip of the ol' white bonnet to Mary Ann Evans, aka George Eliot, but simply forgot to change more of the words, to make them her own. Had she done so, I'd still have recognized the coincidence, and would have stayed bemused by Dorothea's brief walk-on role. But as it is, this strikes me, at best, as careless.

I'm probably making too much of this small bit of borrowing, but it has made an uneasy impression on me, and what are reviews for if not to relate our impressions? One thing is certain: as I continue reading, I'll be on the lookout for more homages to the classics. I've probably missed one or two already, but if there are more, I hope they are done more artfully than this one.

This was a big disappointment. I had read the reviews and thought this was going to be a "can't-miss" read. Alas, I gave up about half way through. It just never caught my attention, and I found myself speed reading to get through all the parts that bogged down. Perhaps the best was yet to come, but after I made it to the middle and was still not interested....

Short summary, with no spoilers in this review:

It's 1815, just weeks after Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo and we are introduced to Daniel Connor, a young medical student from England who has traveled to Paris to study anatomy. He is just 23 years old and has been somewhat sheltered in his upbringing. He has letters of introduction with him, along with samples of corals that he hopes to present to the famous Dr. Cuvier in the hope he can study under him.

On the way into Paris, Daniel shares a stage coach with a mysterious woman who is with a young child. Upon waking up from a short nap he finds out his wallet and money are intact, but the corals and his work product and journals are now missing. The woman and child are gone as well.

The novel tells of Daniel's search for these items, and his adventures in some of the darker parts of Paris. We also learn about the horrors of the French Revolution and its subsequent affect on the city as well as the prevailing scientific theory at that time as to evolution and the beginnings of man.

Interspersed throughout the novel and corresponding in time, are chapters showing us Napoleon's whereabouts and his thoughts as he is heading off to exile at St. Helena.

I thought that this was an interesting story and I felt that I was not only entertained, but I learned quite a bit. Stott explains in her Author's Note that this novel is based on fact, and as a reader I feel I now have an understanding of what life was like in Paris, in 1815, both from a societal, philosophic and scientific viewpoint.

In critique, even though the novel may be based on fact, it seemed anachronistic. It very much felt like modern characters thrown into that place and time. I also felt frustrated by certain plot devises - I often thought that characters didn't ask important (obvious) questions when they should have, in order to advance the plot.

Despite these reservations, recommended for those who enjoy historical fiction.

I was so excited by Stott's first novel, "Ghostwalk," that I ran right out and read her second, "The Coral Thief."

It was quite a let-down.

The prose is still crisp and sometimes luminous, but the story is feeble and the main character, the narrator, Daniel Connor, is dull.

Several characters call him "clever," but there is no evidence in the book to suppose he is.

The title character, the coral thief, Lucienne Bernard, is interesting, but she is onstage for only about 10% of the book.

Worse, the glimpses we have of her are mainly TOLD, by Connor, rather than SHOWN, in her actions.

The first dictum of storytelling is: don't Tell, SHOW.

Stott followed that admirably in "Ghostwalk." She fails to do it here, and the story lags and drags and barely creeps.

Connor never really comes to life, and the secondary characters, even Lucienne, don't come to life in his dull ramblings.

This is a pity.

There are the makings of many good stories here. If Stott had started with Lucienne--years or decades before--and maybe worked Connor in as a minor sidetrack, the story might have been fascinating.

There are echoes of Dickens and Hugo everywhere, but none of those authors' riveting characters and detail.

Too bad.

Daniel Connor is a budding natural history scholar enroute from England to Paris on a stagecoach bound for the Jardin des Plantes, Paris' Natural History Museum. He's been awarded a prestigious position there where he will work illustrating & cataloging the world's known animals and plants. Also traveling on the same coach is an exotic raven haired gypsy-like woman named Lucienne Bernard and her beautiful daughter Delphine. The story opens in 1813, the French Revolution is over, Paris undergoes transformation and renewal. Upon his arrival to the city, Daniel soon realizes that important letters of recommendation, his journals, and rare specimens of coral and fossils have gone missing. Reporting this to the local police, he soon learns that the mysterious woman who so innocently sat beside him on the stagecoach was none other than a famous most wanted thief.

Lucienne Bernard, seductive, cunning, collector and thief, is also a brilliant savant who has traveled the world with Napoleon to Egypt, crossed the sand dunes of the middle-east, journeyed far and wide from Russia to the Orient, to steal and collect the rarest of fossils, corals and gems. She belongs to a ring of thieves known throughout Europe as the Society of Ten Thousand, works with a team of gentlemen scoundrels and crooks as they pull off major heists of the most secret and valuable private collections of Paris. Lucienne is beautiful. She is smart, a scholar and philosopher, a lover and a mother. She is a criminal, a collaborator, and a chameleon as she often goes undercover in disguise canvassing the city, eyes always on the goods. Dangerous, deadly, scheming and seductive, a Medusa with far reaching tendrils that stretch and pull in Paris' precious and prized gems that will fund the world's renowned scientists in their quest to solve the mysteries of life.

Daniel and Lucienne's lives soon intertwine as she pulls the wool over his eyes and draws him into a web of deceit using him in ways he is blind to, manipulating him into helping the Society as they plot to steal the famous Satar diamond being sequestered in the vaults beneath the museum floor. Seducing Daniel and tempting him with a life he's always dreamed of, Daniel learns quickly his life in Paris will not be as planned. The two unlikely cohorts lock minds in love, lust, and larceny, and will dance the dance of romance and intrigue as they match minds with a clever detective who is playing his own cat and mouse game to hunt Lucienne down, and bring her to justice for a past death of one of his men.

Who is who and what is what is not always straightforward in this intriguing new novel. I found the author's ability to slowly build the tension and suspense while building wonderful characters that lift off the pages as if actors in a play around you, simply amazing. Hooked in from the start, I couldn't put this book down. Stott's talent for writing exceptional prose, and offering period detail to give the reader an evocative and cinematic experience of life in Victorian Paris, was just astounding. I was totally mesmerized by this unusual tale, and found the story line of a world of aristocratic thieves combined with the religious and scientific philosophy of the times, that discussed the biblical creation theories versus the evolution of man, quite engaging and thought provoking. Amongst guillotines and libertines, The Coral Thief is a shimmering multifaceted literary gem of history and clever intrigue that surely is a cut above the rest. I look forward to reading other books by this incredibly talented author. This book is not to be missed!!!

On the surface, The Coral Thief is the story of a young and rather naive medical student who has fallen in love with a mysterious thief, and into her plans for an audacious jewel heist. The Coral Thief, however, is not merely about Daniel Connor's love affair. It is also the story of changing evolutionary theory set against the backdrop of post-Napoleonic Paris. Stott brings alive the city, the people (many of whom, like Georges Cuvier, are real historical figures), and the heady atmosphere of revolutionary ideas with vivid descriptions and meticulously researched scenes. Interspersed throughout, in short segments, is the story of Napoleon's journey to St Helena, providing a timeline for Daniel's adventures and a grounding for the reader.

The Coral Thief is an interesting and educational novel that will leave you wanting to know more about the time and place in which it is set.

Paris: 1815. Napoleon is in exile, and hundreds of medical students have flocked to the city to study at the Jardin des Plantes under Cuvier, the world-famous naturalist. Daniel Connor is one of these students, hired to be one of Cuvier's legion of assistants. On his arrival, he falls asleep in the coach, and finds that his suitcase-filled with specimens, a manuscripts, and letters of recommendation--has been stolen.

It's a well-researched novel, and beautifully written. But at times I felt as though the narrator was very much emotionally detached from the story he was telling. He didn't seem to be very passionate about the subject he was studying, or even about Lucienne, with whom he was supposedly in love. I was more interested in the character of Jagot, the thief-turned-police detective--based on, or course, Eugene Francois Vidoq. And that's another thing that kind of bothered me: why did Stott make up a totally new character to act as Daniel's foil? Why couldn't she simple have used the real Vidoq instead? But as I've said, the story is interesting and well-written. It just seems a bit too "literary" at times.