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Michelle de Kretser

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The Rose Grower: A Novel Paperback – June 26, 2001

by Michelle De Kretser (Author)

4.0 53 ratings

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Writing with poignancy and mesmerizing detail, Michelle de Kretser has penned a haunting tale set against the madness of the French Revolution -- a wistful, elegantly rendered novel of unrequited love and personal triumph in a world gone tragically awry.

The 1789 storming of the Bastille has brought France to the brink of revolution. Yet in the serene heart of the French province of Gascony, little has changed in a hundred years -- and the events in Paris seem but a distant thunder.

Indeed, the dramatic crash landing of American artist and amateur balloonist Stephen Fletcher sparks far more excitement. Stephen lands in the pastoral world of a magistrate and his three daughters -- ethereal Claire, pert and precocious Mathilde, and plain, sensible Sophie, who lovingly tends her rose garden as she simmers with unfulfilled longings.

As the revolution brings murder, terror, and fear into the remote Gascon countryside, Stephen finds himself enchanted by the angelic Claire. Yet he is also strangely drawn to Sophie, whose courage and compassion sustain them all, from her family to the quixotic, tormented physician who silently adores her. And even as Sophie keeps a tender secret of her own, she works toward realizing yet another dream: the miracle of an original repeat-flowering crimson rose -- a hopeful symbol of an unblighted future.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"If Jane Austen had been French, she might well have invented the family Saint-Pierre.... Stylish and uniquely crafted."
-- The Orlando Sentinel

"Powerful ... lovely, meticulously researched ... evokes the beginnings of the Terror in crisp, elegant, compassionate prose."
-- The New York Times Book Review

"Fascinating ... Sophie's calmness and kindness, her passion for roses, her botanical studies and attempts to create a crimson flower ... are the soul and spine of the book.... De Kretser has exhaustively researched the life of the period, but she wears her knowledge lightly."
-- The Washington Post Book World

From the Inside Flap

Writing with poignancy and mesmerizing detail, Michelle de Kretser has penned a haunting tale set against the madness of the French Revolution -- a wistful, elegantly rendered novel of unrequited love and personal triumph in a world gone tragically awry.

The 1789 storming of the Bastille has brought France to the brink of revolution. Yet in the serene heart of the French province of Gascony, little has changed in a hundred years -- and the events in Paris seem but a distant thunder.

Indeed, the dramatic crash landing of American artist and amateur balloonist Stephen Fletcher sparks far more excitement. Stephen lands in the pastoral world of a magistrate and his three daughters -- ethereal Claire, pert and precocious Mathilde, and plain, sensible Sophie, who lovingly tends her rose garden as she simmers with unfulfilled longings.

As the revolution brings murder, terror, and fear into the remote Gascon countryside, Stephen finds himself enchanted by the angelic Claire. Yet he is also strangely drawn to Sophie, whose courage and compassion sustain them all, from her family to the quixotic, tormented physician who silently adores her. And even as Sophie keeps a tender secret of her own, she works toward realizing yet another dream: the miracle of an original repeat-flowering crimson rose -- a hopeful symbol of an unblighted future.

From the Back Cover

Writing with poignancy and mesmerizing detail, Michelle de Kretser has penned a haunting tale set against the madness of the French Revolution -- a wistful, elegantly rendered novel of unrequited love and personal triumph in a world gone tragically awry.
The 1789 storming of the Bastille has brought France to the brink of revolution. Yet in the serene heart of the French province of Gascony, little has changed in a hundred years -- and the events in Paris seem but a distant thunder.
Indeed, the dramatic crash landing of American artist and amateur balloonist Stephen Fletcher sparks far more excitement. Stephen lands in the pastoral world of a magistrate and his three daughters -- ethereal Claire, pert and precocious Mathilde, and plain, sensible Sophie, who lovingly tends her rose garden as she simmers with unfulfilled longings.
As the revolution brings murder, terror, and fear into the remote Gascon countryside, Stephen finds himself enchanted by the angelic Claire. Yet he is also strangely drawn to Sophie, whose courage and compassion sustain them all, from her family to the quixotic, tormented physician who silently adores her. And even as Sophie keeps a tender secret of her own, she works toward realizing yet another dream: the miracle of an original repeat-flowering crimson rose -- a hopeful symbol of an unblighted future.

About the Author

Michelle de Kretser was born in Sri Lanka and migrated to Australia with her family in 1972. She has taught English at the University of Melbourne, as well as working as an editor and book reviewer. Her novels have been published across the world and translated into several languages. The Hamilton Case won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for South-East Asia and the Pacific, the Encore Award and the Tasmania Pacific Prize for Australian and New Zealand fiction. She lives in Melbourne.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

On a cloudless summer afternoon in 1789, labourers working in the fields around Montsignac, a village in Gascony, saw a man fall out of the sky.

The balloon had drifted over a wooded ridge and into their valley. The farm-workers, straightening up one by one, shaded their eyes against the dazzle of sun on crimson and blue silk. The thing hung in the sky — sumptuous, menacing — like a sign from God or the devil.

Then there was thunder and fire, and a man plummeting earthwards.

It was the 14th of July. The world was about to change.

Stephen opened his eyes and fell in love.

It was right and natural that it should happen that way: he believed, like so many of his generation, in the coup de foudre — the lightning flash which reveals the lie of the land between a man and a woman. “An angel,” he sighed, not caring who might hear.

At once her face moved away, out of his field of vision. There was the sound of vigorous scratching.

He was propped up against cushions on a crimson sofa carved with scallop shells. There was slanting light, mote-speckled, and the scent of roses. He took in the old-fashioned beams, on which blue and red flowers had once been painted, and the unpapered walls. But as usual it was the pictures he really noticed: the large one directly opposite him showed a maiden with a basket of fruit, and the rest were no better. He had imagined that kind of thing would be different in France.

An elderly servant, long and thin as a nail, served him from a decanter on a silver tray. He sipped — was it brandy? something that made him choke — and looked around for her.

She was seated by the window, her head bent over a small garment at which she was stitching. But a child of about eight, solemn-faced and weighed down with dark curls, planted herself in front of him.

“Are you fatally injured? If you live, will you take me ballooning?”

“Mathilde, someone who has suffered an accident is ill-equipped for your conversation.” Stephen turned his head and saw a stout man in a mustard-yellow waistcoat, standing in front of the fireplace. “I envisage a speedier recovery for our visitor if you remove yourself from his vicinity. And take Brutus with you.”

Unperturbed, the child continued to gaze at Stephen with expectant curiosity. “I adore children,” he said and smiled at her. “They are so ... innocent and yet so perceptive in their apprehension of the world.”

“Oh no — another Rousseauist,” said the child with unconcealed disappointment. “I’m not like that at all.”

As she spoke, something manifested itself on the far side of the room. Stephen saw a squat black form, a squashed-in muzzle, a formidable underbite that exposed a row of yellow fangs. Swiftly and noiselessly, the apparition padded up to him and thrust its cold nose between his legs.

His knuckles whitened around his glass.

A tall young woman, whom he had not previously noticed, said, “Brutus!”

The creature withdrew its muzzle an inch or so and sneezed, scattering cold droplets. Its eyes were amber and unwavering, and made no secret of its low opinion of the intruder.

“It’s quite all right,” the child said kindly. “He doesn’t bite many people these days. He used to be much worse.”

“I trust you find the intelligence reassuring.” The stout gentleman crossed the room, obliging the dog to give reluctant ground. Stephen found himself looking up at panoramic grey eyebrows, and sharp brown eyes that pinned an enormous beaky nose into place. “Jean-Baptiste de Saint-Pierre” — holding out his hand — ”Welcome to Montsignac.”

“Stephen Fletcher.” He attempted to get to his feet but Saint-Pierre wouldn’t allow it, waving him back onto the cushions. Brown eyes and yellow ones continued their unhurried scrutiny of his person.

Eventually: “English?”

“American.”

“Really? Then no doubt you have an opinion about turkeys.”

Stephen had just decided that a turkey must be something entirely different in France, when his host added, “But you speak our language very well.”

He identified it as a question. “I’m afraid you exaggerate. But my mother is a Frenchwoman, and since my father’s death we’ve lived with her family.”

The explanation seemed to satisfy Saint-Pierre. “Well, Mr. Fletcher, you appear not to have suffered any serious harm as a result of your unexpected descent into our midst.”

He had been away from home long enough to recognise that he was being gently mocked. Old World conversations required athleticism, a series of leaps between words and what they might mean. That was another thing he had not been prepared for.

“No. That is, I mean...” He wriggled experimentally and regretted it: “My ankle...” He drank more brandy and asked, “What happened?”

“Reports vary. My own conclusion, based on the available evidence, is that you leapt from a balloon that had caught fire. Fortunately, you landed on one of my haystacks. Some villagers carried you here. A doctor has been sent for, but the town is a few miles away.”

One of the young women — not the angel but the tall one — said, “Father, if the gentleman has hurt his ankle it’ll swell up. He should take off his boot.”

At this, the servant creaked forward. “No sense at all,” he remarked, to no one in particular, between bootlaces.

Saint-Pierre said, “Allow me to present my daughters, Mr. Fletcher. Mathilde you are already acquainted with. Then there is Sophie” — she nodded shyly at him — ”and Claire, my eldest.”

The angel looked into his eyes and smiled. Not an angel after all, thought Stephen, but the Madonna herself, with that blue dress.

(Though not perhaps the way it clung to her body.)

“Madame la Marquise de Monferrant,” murmured Saint-Pierre, his head on one side, detached, observing.

Somehow the back of Stephen’s hand struck the decanter, sending it crashing. The dog surged forward and fastened its jaws onto his shin.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Bantam; Bantam Tra edition (June 26, 2001)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 336 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0553381210
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0553381214
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8.8 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.15 x 0.7 x 8.2 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #5,281,310 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #7,642 in Biographical Historical Fiction
- #212,579 in American Literature (Books)

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4.0 53 ratings

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Maya Chhabra

A marvelous novel of the French Revolution

Reviewed in the United States on December 3, 2016

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You may not know this, as I haven’t blogged about the nonfiction books I’ve read about it here, but I’m fascinated by the French Revolution. Two of my favorite fictional portrayals of that event are Victor Hugo’s Quatrevingt-treize and Hilary Mantel’s A Place of Greater Safety. Now I can add Sri Lankan-Australian author Michelle de Kretser’s The Rose Grower to that list.

The Rose Grower takes place in a small town in Gascony, where a liberal aristocratic family, an American artist, and a doctor active in the revolution interact with unexpected consequences. It’s written in a beautiful omniscient, like both of the other novels I mentioned, though closer in tone to the intimacy and complicity of A Place of Greater Safety than to the grandeur of Quatrevingt-treize. It sometimes directly addresses the reader, saying of one character, “Think carefully before you dismiss him as wrong or foolish.” Which is a good bit of advice about the period generally.

My favorite parts of the book focused on the doctor, Joseph Morel, who is a deeply good person without being overly perfect, a difficult balancing act for the author (she doesn’t quite manage the same trick with his love interest and co-protagonist, Sophie). He’s snaps at people unfairly, gets lost in his own happiness to the point of losing track of others, and is easily manipulated by the offer of friendship. Nevertheless, he’s honorable and selfless. When, following a provincial equivalent of the September Massacres, he’s on the point of falling out with his fellow revolutionaries, who don’t seem terribly upset about the murders, they offer him a chance to improve the local hospital. “They knew better than to offer him the world,” as the narrator puts it, “So they offered him the chance to improve it.” Unfortunately, easily manipulated as he is, he doesn’t realize he’s been used until tragedy strikes.

Setting the story in a small provincial town rather than Paris allows for the worst aspects of the revolution to be the work of a single villain, a total sociopath whom no one sees for who he really is until it’s far too late. This would be totally implausible as an explanation of what went wrong generally, and the author does show a larger problem as the tribunal’s jurors condemn people for minor acts of dissent, but it works as a compelling and believable plot in the environment of a single town, and makes for a tense lead-up to the climax.

Kretser also has a realistic way of showing the hypocrisies of the time even in her sympathetic characters–the artist Stephen and his lover end up living on a plantation as slave-owners despite Stephen’s liberalism. This isn’t because they’re evil or uncaring people, but it’s a refusal to make the characters completely modern or even the best examples of their time. Joseph Morel by the end seems to have abandoned, for understandable reasons, the efforts at large-scale improvement of conditions that he undertook earlier. In his new town, the narrator notes from his point of view, “People starve here,” and it’s not clear what he’s doing about it beyond being a good doctor. Despite this, the characters are loveable.

I had a few bones to pick with minor historical details– the position of nuns during the revolution, the portrayal of women’s revolutionary societies, the description of why the Girondins fell–but the historical background is basically accurate despite relying on Simon Schama’s flawed Citizens (I should note that I never actually made it through Citizens, but a variety of sources lead me to believe that it is not exactly a great work of history).

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the period, or anyone just looking for a well-written, heartbreaking story.

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Martina A. Nicolls

Love, jealously, desire, and rejection

Reviewed in the United States on April 6, 2011

In the ten years from 1789 to 1799 in the village of Montsignac in Southern France, love blooms among the tender petals of roses and the thorns of the French Revolution.

Jean-Baptiste raises his three daughters, Claire, Sophie, and Mathilde amid the isolation of the farming village while writing a treatise on the history of French food. There is a day of excitement when an American balloonist, Stephen Fletcher from Paris, falls from the sky into their fields, changing their lives and their world forever.

Claire, the eldest is married to a man in exile as a traitor and has his son. She loves the brash American but is morally tied to her husband, Hubert. Stephen loves Claire but knows he cannot have her and hopes that Hubert dies in the war. Sophie, the aspiring rose grower loves him too, but her love is unrequited. Joseph, the local doctor, loves Sophie but she barely notices him. Mathilde, the youngest, loves her dog, Brutus.

Joseph dislikes Stephen intensely. If he had to name a rose after him, it would be Bombast Recollected or Fragrant Fool. The arrogance of Stephen parallels the harshness of Joseph. To Sophie's father, neither is her ideal partner.

Love, jealousy, desire, and rejection are set among the disease and decay of the French Revolution. Malice, unpatriotism, counter-revolution and the spectacle of execution by guillotine are too strong for fragile love and roses.

Humorous, evocative and tragic, it is an intriguing and interesting novel.

Martina Nicolls, Author of "The Sudan Curse" and "Kashmir on a Knife-Edge"

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Daniel Myers

The War of The Roses?

Reviewed in the United States on May 14, 2013

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I have one piece of advice to anyone considering reading this novel: Pray don't bother if you dislike lush, lyrical poetic prose. The reason being is that there's precious little else worth bothering about in the novel. Yes, it is set in southwest France during the years of the French Revolution, which one would think would add suspense and character development to the story. But, really, there is no story, and the characters have little or no depth to them.. The Revolutionary period is just a backdrop to what amounts to, for the most part, a literary still-life. I think this book is something like what Emily Dickinson would have produced had she tried to write a novel. On the one hand, this is a recommendation: Dickinson is one of the greatest, most nuanced poets ever to set pen to paper, but...well, try to imagine what a three hundred page novel by her might look like.

The passages that grip the poetically attuned reader as s/he embarks on the novel are stunning:

"The Pyrenees are invisible in this fine summer weather; and anyway, they lie over sixty miles to the south. Here, the landscape never loses sight of human proportions. Its contours are varied enough to prevent monotony, gentle enough to avoid grandeur. Its unassuming hilltops afford wide views. It is prodigal with light."

Really quite good, isn't it? And so it remains until about halfway through the book when one realises that one is never going to learn anything further about the characters' inner lives than one already knows. It's the familiar case a poetic novelist faces of trying to walk the tightrope between style and substance and, in this case, falling headlong into style.

One does, of course, learn a great deal concerning roses and their varieties and methods of cross-pollination and what not as practiced in late Eighteenth Century France. Also, there is a very undeveloped intellectual sub-theme concerning Rousseauism, but it never comes near being brought to fruition.

Still, Ms. De Kretser does hit the mark strikingly once in a while, and it's worth the reader's consideration to stop and pause over aperçus such as this one where she takes advantage of the reader's smug prejudice against the naïveté of Rousseau and his followers as she builds up a paragraph and then shoots the whole edifice down with the last sentence:

"Among the great redemptive ideas that had revolutionised his century was the belief that everyone had the right to happiness. People were essentially good, and everyone, not just a privileged minority, had the right to profit from life. Stephen believed these things certainly. Think carefully before you dismiss him as wrong or foolish."

Though the book doesn't really work as a novel, think carefully before you dismiss it altogether.

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Susan Coote

?

Reviewed in France on March 7, 2019

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C’est un livre très intéressant et informatif. J’aimais beaucoup cette histoire malgré le fin qui était triste.

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F. Scott

Not as good as her other work

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 26, 2008

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I loved 'The Hamilton Case', also by Michelle de Kerstner. It was a suprise book, as I got it 2nd hand and didn't know what to expect, but it was beautifully written and very good. So I was really looking forward to reading this book but found it very weak in comparison. But this is an earlier book and her writing has obviously developed a lot in the interim. I would also be tempted to say that the author really found her voice when writing about the country she is originally from and its fascinating history and beauty, rather than a somewhat insipid tale of rose growers during the french revolution. This book was enjoyable to read and had flashes of what I loved in her later book, but is no comparison to 'The Hamilton Case'.

Helen Cross-McGinty

A bit of a disappointment

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 5, 2013

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This book was a bit of a disappointment. I bought it having read "The Lost Dog", which I thought was brilliant; "The Rose Grower" was ok, but not as good as I'd hoped.

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