Customer Reviews

Trespass

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

A tale of siblings, territory and revenge set in the South of France, this is a dark tale and the reader is kept in suspense about the nature of the tragic events until late in the book. It's also about people's relationship to the land and outsiders trespassing on this and on each other's lives.

Set in the hills of Southern France, Trespass is a novel about sibling love and rivalry, disputed territory and ultimately revenge. In the French corner are Aramon Lunel, resident of the Mas Lunel, and his sister Audrun who lives in a cottage in the grounds. In the English corner are Veronica Verey, a garden designer, and her partner, an untalented watercolourist, Kitty. The catalyst that brings these together is the arrival in France of Anthony Verey, Veronica's sister whose exclusive antiques business in London is failing and who decides to follow his sister in finding a new life in France. Aramon is tempted to sell his family Mas by the lure of `foreign' money even if that means that his sister's house has to be destroyed to secure the deal.

Multi-award winning Rose Tremain is a fascinating novelist because each of her books is very different. If anything ties them together it is the approach of from unexpected angles and a focus on unglamorous outsiders. Trespass is no exception - it's full of outsiders and they are always not easy to love. In fact, apart from the poor little school girl, Mélodie, who is left screaming at a gruesome discovery at the end of the first chapter (which we don't find out about for another 200 pages), it's difficult to feel much empathy of affection for any of the cast of characters.

Of course in real life, the obvious course for an antiques dealer in need of cash would be to turn up on day time TV selling tat in various auction rooms. Thankfully, Tremain takes Anthony Verey to the Cévennes hills. Of course, Tremain is not the first to set a book in the South of France, using the beauty of the land and the mysterious impact of the Mistral wind to bring disaster.

At times, some of her characters veer dangerously towards cliché. Why, for example, does Anthony need to have a penchant for young boys for example? It adds nothing to the story. His character is much more subtly portrayed by his amusing habit of appraising the history of every piece of furniture he encounters.

The story has a palpable sense of darkness about it. You know something bad is going to happen from the first chapter, but it's not clear what this is going to be or even to whom it will occur. Once it is clear what has happened, the culprit is not that much of a surprise but again, it's not clear if he or she will get away with it.

The book has important things to say about the clash of cultures and the whole importance of our relationship to the land. It's the English who are trespassing on French land, but also people who are trespassing on each other's lives.

I have to say that it's not my favourite of Tremain's books, but she's such an exciting writer that it's still a very good read. It's perhaps more unsettling and darker than her other books, and it keeps you guessing about the directions it's going to take. And I am still wondering about how poor Mélodie coped with her shocking discovery.

I really like the introductory blurb in the book: "Set among the hills and gorges of the Cevennes, the dark and beautiful heartland of southern France, Trespass is a thrilling novel about disputed territory, sibling love and devastating revenge."

I feel foolish because Trespass is the first Rose Tremain novel I've read, and I absolutely adored her prose:

"Disdain--born out of a specialist knowledge, or what he thought of as a secret knowledge--was a habit perfected over forty years, and was now one of the few pleasures left to him." (p. 11)

I didn't know too much about this novel going into it, and the initial chapters all introduced different characters. I tend to really enjoy novels with seemingly unconnected characters whose paths cross. As a reader, you expect it, but I cherish that feeling of knowing more than the characters do. Tremain skillfully let the reader in on things the characters were oblivious to, but she also let the characters keep a few secrets from the reader.

I adored this novel. I was fascinated by the characters (and Tremain's descriptions of them), I loved the cadence of the prose, and I was amazed at the depth of theme. It's rare for me to picture myself writing an English paper about a novel, but I found myself scribbling notes on theme from the novel's early pages. The trespass in the title is one of land, emotion and personal boundaries. Tremain examines the notion of trespass from so many different perspectives:

'Anything that has existence can be stolen or destroyed. So you must be vigilant.' (p. 15)

The novel is set in southern France, and its first chapter comes from the perspective of a young girl who is new to the town. The reader first sees the landscape through the eyes of an outsider, but as the novel continues, the landscape becomes a character itself. The imagery of both the land and the people were incredibly gothic and mysterious. The land holds as many secrets as the characters.

"Even here, where life went along more slowly than in England, she could sense the restless agitation people felt to make real and tangible to them the fugitive wonders that flickered into their minds." (p. 72)

I loved both the story and its deeper thematic ideas. Trespass is an accessible literary novel with immense death. It's rare I want to reread a book as soon as I finish it, but I'm certain there are more subtleties and clues I've overlooked.

This book tells a dark tale of the trespasses we visit upon one another, as well as those we commit against the land we walk and the world in which we live. On the one hand are Aramon and Audrun, on the other Anthony Verey and his sister Veronica. The lives of these four intersect when Anthony travels to France to visit Veronica, and then sets his sights on buying the Mas Lunel. All of these characters are over sixty years old, and all are living as much in a more vibrant past as in their dismal present day.

Tremain's prose is haunting, her language lyrical and descriptive and at the same time somehow sparse. The darkness in her characters' hearts is palpable to the reader, as is their growing despair. I found the novel to be at times unrelentingly grim, however, and though I was engaged in the story, I was more than ready to finish and shelve the book. I give it 3 stars - for the quality of the writing and for the power of the haunting feelings I was left with long after I was finished reading.

Tremain's insightful novel is set in southern France, a drama evoked by the relationships of two sets of siblings. Aramon Lunel occupies Mas Lunel in the heavily forested countryside, the cultivation of silkworms of its earlier years lost to the past. Aramon's sister, Audren, occupies a homely building on the edge of her brother's property, as victimized as an adult as she was as a child, given to "episodes" that require medication. Veronica Verey, a garden designer, occupies Les Glaniques with her life partner, Kitty, their home lush with Veronica's spectacular gardenscape. Veronica's brother, Anthony, a noted antiques dealer in London, has reached a crisis in his life, leaning on his older sister for support as he considers a major move to France. All of these characters are over sixty, each set of siblings with defining histories, soon to cross the boundaries of one another's lives through Anthony's new venture.

Mining the personalities of her major protagonists, the author strikes a rich vein: Aramon Lunel eager to profit from his inheritance after plundering its beauty, savoring the opportunity to further antagonize his long-suffering sister; small in stature and voice, Audren has been trampled by a family made more intransigent by her mother's death, at the mercy of a brutally insensitive father and brother; the accomplished, confidant Veronica Verey content with her relationship with Kitty until the arrival of her beloved brother; and Anthony Verey, anxious to reinvent himself, leaving behind but a few of the possessions he calls "my beloveds" and the ever less frequent evenings with virile young men. Perhaps it is age that lends this novel its emotional impact, the unbreakable bonds of loyalty and the ease of betrayal, Tremain's exploration of childhood memory tangled with the insecurity of diminishing years: "Old age comes in short flurries. Between the flurries... there's a sort of respite." Seeking this respite, Anthony becomes a catalyst for conflict.

The author creates a symphony of image and sound, the sigh of a breeze in the forest at night, the hush of rain on a parched garden, the "little twist of agony in her heart" when Kitty realizes Veronica will always choose Anthony over her, ultimately, "the damage of trespass", when balance is breached, harmony destroyed, revenge extracted. As layered as the dark secrets in her characters' hearts, this is a novel to be savored for its language and piercing revelations, the savage economy of a brother's cruelties, the elastic bonds of affection planted in childhood, even a shocking discovery by a little girl who stumbles upon horror. Tremain's work grows richer, her rendering of humanity both poignant and terrifying in its accuracy. Luan Gaines/2010.

The first chapter ends with a little girl seeing something in a forest pool. "Then she starts screaming."

What she saw will not be revealed until very near the end of the book, but the echoes of that sentence set up a sense of unease which will not leave the reader.

The story is about a once handsome but now decayed old stone building, a `mas', on a hill in the depth of the Cévennes. Symbolically, its wings have been demolished and in its central part the front wall has running down it a fissure which has not been repaired but has simply been hidden under a coat of plaster.

An elderly Englishman is looking for a place to buy and do up. The mas seems ideal to him. The owner of the mas is eager to sell, not caring that his sister, living in a mean little bungalow within its sight, was due to inherit it.

We are given memorable portraits of the owner and his sister - characters that seem to come out of Maupassant; of the Englishman; of his beloved sister with whom he was staying and who had made her home in a village near the mas with a woman friend; and of all the other people who figure in this novel, both living and dead. For every now and again thoughts of their past and of their long dead parents pass through the minds of all these people, and what is revealed is sad, often startling and increasingly horrifying. Intense hatreds are revealed - between the owner of the mas and his sister, between the Englishman and his sister's female lover - and the tension gradually mounts. The climax is unexpected - and is followed by a sad and exhausted coda.

All this is played out against the Cévennes countryside, its sights, smells, sounds and weather beautifully described. Nature herself is one of the characters in the story.

Beginning with the very first chapter, in which a young girl makes a shocking discovery in a creek while on a school field trip, Trespass overflows with foreboding and suspense. The novel progresses in two alternating storylines. In one, an alcoholic man living in the Cévennes region of southern France is seduced by the money he can make by selling his crumbling ancestral estate, a sale that is vehemently opposed by his sister who lives in a small bungalow next door. In the other storyline, a sophisticated London antiques dealer decides to wrap up his failing business and to relocate to the Cévennes to be closer to his beloved sister. These two narratives move slowly towards each other and eventually intersect in surprising and violent ways. As its title suggests, Trespass is full of encroachments, including those affecting the land, the body, and the mind.

Tremain effectively harnesses the mysteries of the remote French landscape to enhance the tone of ominous dread that pervades this novel. The alternating narratives propel the story forward, and, although the novel labors under an unrelenting grimness, the momentum never flags. Trespass is a haunting and beautifully written novel with a satisfying, but not too neat, ending.

Rose Tremain is not only a prolific writer, but she is a great one. Each of her novels is different in theme, tenor, and topic. Trespass, her most recent book, is a dark, eerie and grim themed novel with a definite gothic undertone. Set in the southern part of France, in an area known as the Cevennes region, the land itself is portrayed as something feral and alive, so filled with lush growth, insects, snakes and sounds, that it has a life of its own.

In this region live a sister and brother, Audrun and Aramon Lunel. Aramon lives in the family home, Mas Lunel, that he inherited from his father. Audrun lives in a small bungalow in sight of Mas Lunel. Aramon is a misanthropic, mean-spirited drunk who has let his home go to ruin. It stinks, the olive groves are overgrown, and the hunting dogs are starving to death. Audrun hates her brother for reasons that are divulged towards the middle of the book. She inherited some land from her father and she loves to walk on it. In her bungalow, she feels like an outcast, seeing few people and staying very much to herself. Her only peace comes from her home and land. One day as she is doing her daily walk on her land, she sees Arumel stealing some of her saplings and fallen brush. Feelings of hate roil up in her but she lets him take the wood with her permission.

In another part of the valley live Veronica and her life partner Kitty in a home called Les Glaniques. They are totally and passionately in love. Kitty is a watercolorist of very limited talent and Veronica is writing a book called `Gardening Without Water'. Veronica is originally from England and is very close with her brother, Anthony Verey, who still resides there. Anthony is a narcissistic antiques dealer. He likes to refer to himself as `the Anthoney Verey'. He was once the talk of the town, invited to every party and known by everybody worth knowing. He calls his antiques his `beloveds'. With the downturn in the economy, Anthony is facing an existential crisis. Where once he could fall asleep by counting all those who envied him, he now is selling very little and invited places very infrequently. He and his sister, Veronica, have always been very close though he does not like Kitty. He decides to visit Veronica and stay for an indeterminate length of time. Though Veronica is thrilled about this visit, Kitty has reservations.

Once Anthony gets to his sister's, he falls in love with the region and decides that he wants to purchase a home in the Cevennes region. Interestingly, he wants to buy Mas Lunel. He still has a lot of money and can spend 450,000 Euros on this home. Only one thing bothers him - Audrun's bungalow is visible from the estate and he finds it an eyesore. Aramon, with dollar signs in his eyes, tells Anthony that he believes the bungalow is built illegally on his land and that he will get a surveyor to prove it. Then they will be able to tear it down. A series of events begins that set into motion acts that have irreparable results.

While staying with Veronica and Kitty, Anthony does his best to intervene in their relationship, trying to drive a rift between them. They become afraid to share their feelings and passion as they once did, suspicious that Anthony is on the other side of the door or the wall listening to them. Once like one, they grow further and further apart.

Trespass is a powerful word and in this novel we see it used in all its meanings. There is the basic trespassing on land, people trespassing on other lives and ignoring boundaries, the cultural implications of trespassing on the land of another culture, and the trespassing on honor and truth. Throughout the book, there is a darkness, a grim forboding of things to come. In some ways, this reminded me of the best of Joyce Carol Oates, and the way Oates portrays the darkness of characters and the dangers lurking in the ordinary day to day world. Tremain's characters are rich. They come alive for us and we flinch at the darkness within their souls along with the pain within their hearts. She is a fine writer and this is one of her best books to date.

From the three novels of hers that I have read, Rose Tremain appears to be a writer of some scope. THE COLOUR (2003), about the New Zealand gold rush, shows a brilliant historical writer with spiritual overtones. THE ROAD HOME, which won her the Orange Prize in 2008, is a gritty story of an Eastern European immigrant in modern London. TRESPASS, her latest, set in the Cévennes mountains in the South of France, is hailed on the cover by Jane Smiley as a Gothic. And so it is, in the sense that it is inhabited by reclusive people with dark secrets, and begins with a scene of horror. But it is also something more, something I did not fully realize until I read the author's reading group interview at the end. Her publishers do Tremain a disservice by flaunting the genre element.

In the opening, a lonely French child, Mélodie, wanders away from a school picnic, seeking seclusion by an overgrown river, and sees something that makes her scream. We assume a dead body, but do not learn who this is until almost the end of the novel, killed by whom, or why. Instead Tremain introduces us to two brother and sister pairs. Aramon Lunel, a drunken peasant, lives in a broken-down farmhouse (or "mas"), surrounded by starving dogs and the detritus of a failed life. Audrun, his psychologically unstable sister, lives in a bungalow on the edge of the property and avoids her brother as much as possible. Meanwhile Anthony Verey, a once-successful high-end London antiques dealer, quits his business and comes for a visit to his sister Veronica, a garden designer who lives with a female companion not far from the Mas Lunel. Tremain takes her time establishing the fierce emotions and traumatic back-stories of these five characters; she seems in no hurry to spring the mystery, and at times I felt I was reading a novella stretched beyond its proper length. But although her portrayal of the Lunels is truly Gothic, there is much sensitivity and love in Tremain's treatment of Anthony and Veronica, and the very end is quietly satisfying.

All the way through, I had assumed that "Trespass" referred to the wandering of the little girl, the boundary disputes between Aramon and Audrun, or the general trespass by foreign house-buyers on this last uncolonized region of France. But in her afterword, Tremain puts it differently: "I wanted to write a novel which examines how, in a secular society where there is little or no belief in an afterlife, people cope with the trespass of death, which begins to be felt around age sixty." An interesting theme, and I can certainly see how it applies in hindsight. But I still feel that Tremain could have explored it more deeply in a book with less obvious ties to the conventions of genre. [3.5 stars]

Rose Tremain hits the mark again with "Trespass", a dark and twisty gothic thriller about two ageing pairs of brother-sister siblings, one French, the other English, whose lives intersect and enmesh when one of the four, an English garden designer (Victoria Verey) moves into the French countryside with her failing watercolorist lover (Kitty) to become neighbours to Aramon and Audrun Lunel, who live respectively in their old family home and a small cottage at the edge of their compound and is soon joined by Anthony (Victoria's brother) when he decides to pack in his antique business in London to come in search of his own place to live amongst them.

A young girl makes a shocking discovery early on before we are yanked back into times past tracing the history of a cruel twisted relationship between the pair of French siblings contrasting with the fiercely protective big sister act of Victoria towards Anthony, which the bitterly insecure Kitty perceives as a threat to her life with Victoria. There are early hints of trouble with two kinds of love that dare not speak their names arousing sibling rivalries and jealousies in a five-cornered contest that can spell only disaster.

With Tremain, there is little of the blood and gore you'd expect in murder mysteries. Hers is more subtle and infinitely more satisfying. She nails the Victoria-Kitty-Anthony death dance with wonderful precision. I only wish we knew more about the underwritten Anthony. Kitty's burning jealousy of Anthony reminds me uncannily of D H Lawrence's novella "The Fox" about how the intimate lives of two women living together in seclusion are disrupted and ultimately shattered by the arrival of a man. Tremain is however less successful with the characterization of Aramon and Audrun. We know what happened between them and with their father but we are left with the question WHY ? Does evil and cruelty not need an excuse ? I found that a trifle unsatisfying.

This little niggling complaint aside, "Trespass" is a terrific novel and must count among my most enjoyable reads this past year. Highly recommended.

As readers, we return to authors for various reasons. Sometimes it is the quality of the writing, perhaps the setting or time period, the skilled characterizations and inter-relationships, often the analysis of what it takes to get through a life. Rose Tremain actually gets high points for each of these, but I am drawn more by the element of surprise. Each time I approach a new work by Tremain I have this wonderful sense of anticipation, of knowing that I will be both challenged and delighted. Trespass, the newest work by Rose Tremain, certainly met my expectations.

The relationship between siblings provides an interesting context for Trespass. Anthony Verey is a powerful London antiques dealer who finally realizes he is old, lonely and no longer admired. He decides to visit his sister, Veronica, who lives with her partner in the south of France, and during his visit makes a second decision to stay, to buy a house and leave his former life behind. A second set of siblings are Aramon and Audrun, estranged brother and sister, who live side by side, Aramon in the large house in the country, left to him by his father. Audrun lives in a run down cottage on the grounds and both nurse grudges that run deep. When Anthony decides to buy Mas Lunel, Aramon's home, events are set into motion and in true Tremain fashion, they unfold in unexpected and somehow inevitable ways.

My favorite Tremain novel is "The Road Home", a telling account of an East European immigrant's experiences in London, a story that is as current as the EU's most recent application of the Schengen agreement. Trespass has a more timeless feeling. The setting of rural France and the resentment of locals at the high housing prices caused by the British invasion are important, but the beauty of the novel is in the relationship of the two pairs of siblings and their own inner struggles. This could have occurred any time and anywhere, but the setting of rural France provides a lovely backdrop.

While everyone keeps an eye out for the next big literary thing to arrive and tracks the odds on the eventual Man Booker winner, Rose Tremain simply does what she does best. She has garnered an impressive list of awards, but mostly she writes interesting, compelling, beautifully-crafted novels that intrigue, surprise and delight. And she never disappoints.