Status
Available
Call number
Publication
Serpents Tail (2011), Hardcover, 320 pages
Description
Married to a great man, in love with a man like no other .
Media reviews
It is a testament to Humphrey’s skill that Victor Hugo should emerge as a mountain of bombast and self-absorbed genius, and yet never overpower in our minds the unimposing figure of Charles.
Helen Humphreys has no need to feel insecure about The Reinvention of Love, an entertaining novel at the same time as it is emotionally harrowing. The work is a triumph of lucid, vigorous, suspenseful narrative, a historical fiction that wears the author’s knowledge of the past lightly, a
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convincing study of character that could be set in almost any civilized era. Show Less
History, that incubator of stranger-than-fiction stories, provides the plot outline for Humphreys’ intriguing new novel set in the literary ferment of 19th-century Paris. Its focus is the doomed affair between journalist and literary critic Charles Sainte-Beuve and Adèle Hugo, the wife of Victor
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Hugo, Sainte-Beuve’s friend and neighbour. It’s a tale whose potential scope is as epic as a Hugo novel, given the sensational details. Cross-dressing! Hermaphroditic genital malformation! Social climbing at the court of Napoleon III! Literary rivalries! Insanity!...Yet Humphreys, a nuanced, evocative writer, chooses to fill in the bold outline gently, even pallidly, with pastel hues, alternating Charles’s and Adele’s voices over 30 years.... Show Less
User reviews
LibraryThing member lkernagh
When writer Charles Sainte-Beuve meets Victor's Hugo's wife, Adèle, their star-crossed love affair becomes the talk of Paris and changes the lives of all those around them.
Helen Humphreys is a favorite author of mine and I looked forward to reading this one. Relying heavily on actual events,
By the end of the story, I realized that this was more than a historical fiction piece. It really is a examination of love, in all it's forms - the passionate mutual affection of Charles and Adèle; the stifling, controlling and self-centered love of Victor; the consuming yet misguided love of Dèdè, Adèle and Victor's youngest daughter; the sacrificing love of Charles Vacquerie for Léopoldine, Adèle and Victor's eldest daughter and of course, the love of a mother for her children.
Two of my favorite quotes from the book are below:
It was all I could do after the affair ended. I let my work consume me, feed off my bones. I have nothing else. But writing feels entirely fraudulent in comparison to love. The moment one writes about something is the moment one ceases to understand it. To write is to control experience, and to control experience is to lose its meaning. I am not saved by my work. It is just hard proof that I have lost my way.
Who we are is determined not just by the choices we make, by how we sew events together into narrative. What gives us the true measure of ourselves is how undone we can become by a single moment. And what that moment is.
Overall, a beautiful story that I enjoyed reading.
Helen Humphreys is a favorite author of mine and I looked forward to reading this one. Relying heavily on actual events,
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Humphreys has provided, from an historical perspective, an interesting examination of what love is, covering ground she previously provided insight insight into with her previous novel, [The Lost Garden]. I started this book and for the first 150 pages treated this book for what I thought it was - a historical fiction of the star-crossed lovers Charles Sainte-Beuve and Adèle Hugo, told from their perspective. The Parisian literary world of the period is captured here as we are introduced to Charles's friendship with George Sand and his acquaintances with the greats of the period - Dumas, Balzac and yes, Victor Hugo. I enjoyed the easy reading style presented here that still captures the essence of the period and the shifting perspectives of Charles and Adèle. I love epistolary novels and was happy to discover that the love and mindset of Adèle's youngest daughter - also Adèle, but known as Dèdè - is captured in a series of correspondence between family and her lover. By the end of the story, I realized that this was more than a historical fiction piece. It really is a examination of love, in all it's forms - the passionate mutual affection of Charles and Adèle; the stifling, controlling and self-centered love of Victor; the consuming yet misguided love of Dèdè, Adèle and Victor's youngest daughter; the sacrificing love of Charles Vacquerie for Léopoldine, Adèle and Victor's eldest daughter and of course, the love of a mother for her children.
Two of my favorite quotes from the book are below:
It was all I could do after the affair ended. I let my work consume me, feed off my bones. I have nothing else. But writing feels entirely fraudulent in comparison to love. The moment one writes about something is the moment one ceases to understand it. To write is to control experience, and to control experience is to lose its meaning. I am not saved by my work. It is just hard proof that I have lost my way.
Who we are is determined not just by the choices we make, by how we sew events together into narrative. What gives us the true measure of ourselves is how undone we can become by a single moment. And what that moment is.
Overall, a beautiful story that I enjoyed reading.
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LibraryThing member RandyMetcalfe
Helen Humphreys writes with such a sure hand that she may in fact be hindered rather than helped by choosing to focus upon the brief, infertile, frenzied, but curious affair between Charles Saint-Beuve and Adèle Hugo, the wife of Victor Hugo and mother of his four children. The sepia tone of the
The other significant player in this drama is Victor Hugo himself, but like his ego he seems too large for such a trifling affair. Is ‘trifling’ unfair? And if not, who is trifling with whom? Certainly Adèle breaks off relations with Saint-Beuve as soon as her husband learns of the affair and demands its end. The eddies of their “love” continue to swirl for some time, but it’s hard to take it seriously given how comprehensively it ends. Not so much the reinvention of love as the devolution of love.
And then there is the curious section that ties these events to Canada in the form of the deluded youngest daughter of Victor and Adèle, known as Dédé. She escapes the voluntary exile that her father has chosen for his family on the island of Guernsey in order to follow her supposed lover, a British officer, to Halifax in Canada. Her love, however, is even less substantial than Saint-Beuve’s and Adèle’s in that it appears to be entirely imaginary (at least as presented here). Not too surprisingly, Dédé ends her days confined for more than 45 years to an asylum.
Like me, you may find yourself admiring Humphreys’ writing more than the story she has chosen to tell. Which is somewhat disappointing. With madness, cross-dressing, hermaphrodites, adultery, and great poetry and literature on hand, surely there is a gripping story to tell. Perhaps Saint-Beuve’s diffidence has infected his own tale and neutered it (an ironic commentary on his biographical theory of literary criticism if there ever was one). But not a recommendation for this particular story (though I would gladly read another Helen Humphreys effort).
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writing cloys at times, as though it were merely the result of an Instagram filter. Yet there is certainly something here worth Humphreys’ time and talent. Saint-Beuve is sexually ambiguous, a comfortable cross-dresser with a secret that limits his willingness to explore his own appetites. Adèle is rapacious, and, to me at least, inexplicable. Together their love is a meringue, a swirl of passion, full of air.The other significant player in this drama is Victor Hugo himself, but like his ego he seems too large for such a trifling affair. Is ‘trifling’ unfair? And if not, who is trifling with whom? Certainly Adèle breaks off relations with Saint-Beuve as soon as her husband learns of the affair and demands its end. The eddies of their “love” continue to swirl for some time, but it’s hard to take it seriously given how comprehensively it ends. Not so much the reinvention of love as the devolution of love.
And then there is the curious section that ties these events to Canada in the form of the deluded youngest daughter of Victor and Adèle, known as Dédé. She escapes the voluntary exile that her father has chosen for his family on the island of Guernsey in order to follow her supposed lover, a British officer, to Halifax in Canada. Her love, however, is even less substantial than Saint-Beuve’s and Adèle’s in that it appears to be entirely imaginary (at least as presented here). Not too surprisingly, Dédé ends her days confined for more than 45 years to an asylum.
Like me, you may find yourself admiring Humphreys’ writing more than the story she has chosen to tell. Which is somewhat disappointing. With madness, cross-dressing, hermaphrodites, adultery, and great poetry and literature on hand, surely there is a gripping story to tell. Perhaps Saint-Beuve’s diffidence has infected his own tale and neutered it (an ironic commentary on his biographical theory of literary criticism if there ever was one). But not a recommendation for this particular story (though I would gladly read another Helen Humphreys effort).
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LibraryThing member skent
I was thoroughly captivated by Humphrey's telling of the relationship between Adele Hugo and her husband Victor's critic Charles
LibraryThing member john257hopper
This novel tells the story of the unusual love affair between Adele Hugo, wife of the famous 19th century French novelist Victor Hugo, and the journalist and much less well known writer Charles Sainte-Beuve. The bulk of the book is taken up by sections told from their respective points of view as
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their lives intertwine then separate over the course of several decades. In its essence, though, the novel is really about the effect that Victor Hugo as a giant of French literature and culture for five decades had on those around him, an effect that in some ways damages and even destroys most of their lives. The affair, not unsurprisingly, affects Victor's friendship with Charles, and also tears Adele Hugo apart emotionally as she finds she cannot leave her children for the sake of her lover. Of Victor's four children, only his younger daughter Dede (Adele) outlived him and she was in an insane asylum for 40 years. Her growing dislocation from sanity is probably the saddest thread in the novel. Part of the reason for it was the effect of the tragic death of her elder sister in a boating accident with her new husband, when Dede was still a child. Victor's two sons and Adele follow him into exile in the Channel Isles after he falls foul of Napoleon III and this prevents them from taking places in French society and they waste away their lives. It is almost as though Victor Hugo is a such a colossally bright figure that those around him wither away or burn up. An interesting and slightly unusual novel. Show Less
LibraryThing member Dabble58
Helen Humphreys is one of my favourite authors. She can spin a phrase that makes you weep with the glory of it, can break your heart in a sentence, change your mood in a paragraph.
The reinvention of love is a book filled with such moments. We are taken to the France of Victor Hugo, cholera,
Every character is carefully explored, every moment enhanced. The story itself, centred around Charles Sainte-Beuve, pulls you along through the tides of history, stopping here and here for a dip into one literary salon or another.
It all makes me wish that I could have lived in Paris back then, smelly sewers and intrigue and all. What a magical time that was!
Let Humphreys take you for an exploration of this time and the depth of human love.
The reinvention of love is a book filled with such moments. We are taken to the France of Victor Hugo, cholera,
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revolutions, and Napoleon, to witness a literary competition wrapped in a love affair.Every character is carefully explored, every moment enhanced. The story itself, centred around Charles Sainte-Beuve, pulls you along through the tides of history, stopping here and here for a dip into one literary salon or another.
It all makes me wish that I could have lived in Paris back then, smelly sewers and intrigue and all. What a magical time that was!
Let Humphreys take you for an exploration of this time and the depth of human love.
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Awards
Dublin Literary Award (Longlist — 2013)
Canadian Authors Association Award (Shortlist — Fiction — 2012)
Language
Original publication date
2011
Physical description
320 p.; 8.5 inches
ISBN
1846687985 / 9781846687983