Customer Reviews

The Palace of Tears

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

 

 

In Palace of Tears, Alev Croutier wraps us up in her own magical reverie on a late 1800s-Frenchman who falls in love with a Turkish woman he sees in a miniature painting and sets out on a voyage to find her. Croutier's masterful handling of language and its layers only adds to the dreamy, ethereal nature of this novel which lulls you quite into another world, another age, making you believe you are drifting on a cloud above its protagonists. Taking her inspiration from Persian fairytales, Croutier leaves empty spaces for the reader to fill, ending up with a book that is interactive enough to fit in with our new high-tech age, while also harkening back to another, where poetry and love are always enough.

I give _The Palace of Tears_ three stars, because I can't think of anything I particularly liked _or_ disliked about it. It just kind of...was.

The novel seems to be based on a tale the author's grandmother told her long ago, and I can see that this could have been an enchanting story when told in that way. In fact, had Croutier written a short story with this material, pruning out the fluff, it probably would have been a very good love story. As it is, we have a slim story padded out into a short novel, stuffed with ruminations about the Suez Canal, and about the nature of love. We have characters that I just couldn't get into. They never really seemed real to me. The hero is callous in his treatment of everyone but the heroine, the heroine is too sweet and beautiful to be real, and they wander through the novel spewing forth theories on the nature of love and of fate. They talk like proverbs, not like real people.

Again, I would have liked it much better as a short story, with the forced philosophical musings left out.

This is a great little story of love, desire, loss, foreign places, and culture. Croutier paints beautiful pictures of every place the book takes the reader. The prose is vivid and alive, and the characters are vibrant and complex. Each chapter begins with a tiny black and white sketch that just adds to the mystery and eroticism of the book. This is a fairy tale for adults. You will want to live in the countries and time period that this book brings alive.

I picked up this book because the premise seemed interesting and because it reminded me of those novels with magical realism that I used to love reading so much (and still do, but it's difficult to find new ones these days. This one itself is about five years old). The Palace of Tears is one of the most wonderful and literary romantic novels I have read in recent years. In his thirties, Casimir de Chateauneuf has it all, a wife, three children and is a successful vintner. However, he is bored with his predictable life and seeks something more profound, and he gets his answer when he sees the miniature of the beautiful and mesmerizing woman with one blue eye and the other one yellow. He falls in love with this fascinating vision and sets out to find her. The woman he seeks out is a harem slave in Istanbul, and she has had dreams of Casimir. Casimir goes through many things in his search for La Poupe (the woman in the miniature). Will he be able to find her? Will these two unlikely characters find love and happiness?

The Palace of Tears is more of a novella than a novel, but it is wonderful and engrossing and I wish it had been longer. As another reviewer pointed out, this story reminds me a lot of one by Jorge Luis Borges. Actually, this story reminds me a great deal of South American and Eastern European literature with all of the magical realism, fairy-tale feel and interpretable language that populate the aforementioned genre. This novel also reminds me a little of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray with its arty surrealism. Casimir is a fascinating character. He is by no means sympathetic, and that is what makes him all the more palatable. I love the backdrop of France and Istanbul in 1868. And I also enjoyed the two star-crossed lovers that make this one of the most fascinating reads I've had this year. I cannot recommend The Palace of Tears enough.

Though very successful as a vintner and happily married with three children, Casimir de Chateauneuf is bored. He leaves his family behind in Chateauneuf to travel to Paris where he maintains a mistress. While there, Casimir enters Orientalia, a shop with goods from the East. When he sees the miniature of a young woman, he obsesses over the unknown female with a blue eye and a yellow eye. He quickly learns the identity of the artist and begins to trail the man, who has headed home to Alexandria, but his quest fails and Casimir returns to France a broken man.

Not long afterward, Casimir becomes involved with the opening of the Suez Canal. On his return to Egypt he meets the lady in the portrait, Kukla, who has been lent to the French by the Sultan as a translator. She knows he is the love who she dreamed was the one dreaming of her. Casimir and Kukla begin to fall in love, but though East meets West at the Isthmus, love might not survive the shrinking of the world.

THE PALACE OF TEARS is an enjoyable historical romance that brings life to the opening of the Suez Canal in 1868. The plot belongs to the characters, especially Casimir, who will give up his material world to attain his destiny. Readers will immensely enjoy this novel while wondering how this superb book is Alev Lytle Croutier's debut novel.

Harriet Klausner

This is an exquisitely crafted novel that will inspire all sort of orientalist fantasies. Madame Croutier pulls you into her story with the ever sympathetic dreamer, Casimir Chataneuf, and doesn't let you go until he finds his destiny -- the mistress of an enchanting pair of eyes: one blue, one yellow. M. Croutier weaves her tale by zooming in and out of time and painting scenes in all the detail of Turkish miniatures. Though its told in the style of a fairy tale, this novel is anything but, for it resonates with important themes, including how life and love are inscrutably at the mercy of kismet or destiny.

AFter glancing at the lush cover and exotic plot, I couldn't wait to start this book. Though it had some strong qualities (dreamy writing, exotic scenery ranging from France to Egypt to Istanbul), overall, I found it disappointing. Not to nitpick, but the major plot device (dreaming someone else while at the same time they are dreaming you) is stolen directly from Jorge Luis Borges, the great Argentinian writer. To make matters worse, later in the novella a character looks for a book in the library that contains everything, and that too is directly copied from Borges! So much for originality. There is very little character development, so we never feel that we get to know Casimir or feel for him. The "true love" never seems fully rendered. All in all, most of the charm of this book lies on the surface (setting, plot) but once you dig a little, much of the magic fades away.

Story:
Casimir is a sucessful vineyard owner who takes a trip to paris circa 1869 to further his craft and to lift the bordem that he feels has taken over his life. One day while working the social circles of paris he comes upon the minitaure of a strange woman, one eye is blue the other is yellow. Instantly in love Casimir sets off to find this strange woman. His quest will lead him far from his current life to the "city of the world's desire" where he will have to overcome many obstacles to finally be with the woman he was born to love.
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I don't normally read these types of books, but thats the point of chosing random one's from the libary. This is a romance that is almost written as poetry. The chapters are very short and the scenes are very well described, it is very easy to picture what is going on. As far as the story goes it doesn't get real complicated, which I'm sure is to show that the two main characters were meant to be together no matter what. The main character also doesn't show much concern in leaving his past life behind and the reader doesn't get much of a idea of what his wife and children thought of the whole thing. There is also quite of bit of history mixed in which is interesting, the book also gets into the why's and wherefores of the sultans kingdom and some of the traditions and history of it which is also interesting (never heard of the living dolls before)and moves the stor along as the main character moves in the background at important events. To Summarize I liked the story at the core of the book, though I wish some of the supporting characters had been given some screen time and some parts where a little too much romantic poetry but I would definetley recommend this to any one who is interested in historical romances and those who like romances that deal with "star crossed" lovers.
m.a.c

"This is a naive little story of love, desire, loss, foreign places, and culture. It is a fairy tale for adults. I enjoyed reading it...It made me dream..."

The sing song-y prose was reminiscent of the Little Prince and I sensed that she wanted it to read that way. It just wasn't endearing enough to engage my interest and the only reason I finished it was because it was really short. As mentioned in another review - the main character was rude and inconsiderate to his family and friends and only tried to be nice to the heroine. There wasn't any reason for me to root for him. The character development was thin and the plot was only mildly interesting. I read a lot of historical fiction and think that books like Shadow on the Wind and In the Company of the Courtesan are examples of how to engage a reader in wonderfully flawed characters and their stories.

I have wanted to buy Crouier's novel Seven Houses, but am afraid that it will be like the Palace of Tears...