book review by showhost jan 2014
I borrowed this book from our local library
– it’s hardback with 550 pages so you can imagine how heavy it was, not the
sort to pop into your handbag.
I went to the library looking for a Kate
Mosse book – I had recently watched a televised film based on her book
Labyrinth and really enjoyed it – but had never read one of her books. At the time I got this book I also took out
‘Winter Ghosts’ as that was a lot smaller/thinner book & the librarian said
it was very popular. I didn’t much care
for that book but I did find this one very engrossing.
All her stories seem to have the same
format going from past to present day/ present day to past with a link to
them. In Labyrinth it was a ring which
was found on an archeological dig. In Sepulchre
it is a sheet of music by Debussy & a deck of Tarot cards. The link is found in the present day then the
story goes back to the past where the story unfolds of how the link came to be
involved.
It’s 1891, Paris, the main characters
Leonie Vernier and her brother Anatole are going to the Opera. The Opera is by a Prussian Composer, Anatole
is late so Leonie goes in alone but the Opera is disrupted by French
Nationalist Protestors as they storm the Opera house and things get ugly. It is a turbulent time in Southern
France.
Anatole is set upon by thugs, this and the
mourning of his recently deceased lover prompts their mother to suggest they go
and stay
with her brothers widow near the medieval
city of Carcassonne
in the Domaine de la Cade.
Leonie whilst wondering the grounds finds
the Visigoth Sepulchre whose spirits and mysteries still seem to posses the
ancient building. She finds books in her
uncles library telling of the mysteries and the Tarot cards which are rumoured
to hold the power of life and death.
The Domaine has been the subject of many
stories of myth & legend of wild animals who roam at night. When children start to go missing and whose
dead bodies turn up mauled the locals start to fear that the spirits have been
angered by the illicit actions of Anatole & his wife and they storm the
Domaine.
Present day, October 2007, Meredith is
researching the life of Claude Debussy in a quiet village on the edge of the
Pyranees. She is also trying to trace
her ancestors & all she has is a sheet of music written by Debussy and an
old sepia photograph. Her birth mother
was haunted by voices and took her own life when Meredith was very small. When Meredith sees the old photograph in the
hotel where she is staying of Leonie, Anatole and their aunt she is struck by
the resemblance to her photograph of her great-great-grandfather. She knew he came from around this area and
then went to America. She unexpectedly has her Tarot cards read and
is given the pack to keep. This sets her
in motion in her quest to find out what happened all those years ago in 1891.
This is a story of revenge, adventure love,
ghosts murder and local history. The
author certainly studies her subject and place and puts an enormous amount of
information into it, sometimes I thought maybe too much (but maybe she is
setting the scene for a tv adaptation) which for me went from engrossing to unengrossing as
the unnecessary info became a tad too much but enjoyable all the same. Shame about the ending too as it seemed inconclusive and very supernatural.
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