Artists a feature of author's first novel

During the Second World War, London's National Gallery ran a Picture of the Month scheme, putting one masterpiece on public display each month to keep up morale and cultural interest during the city's dark years.

In the present, Claire and her Canadian husband, Rob, once so much in love, are drifting apart since the death of their unborn baby, six months earlier. When Rob's grandmother, Elizabeth dies in Canada, the couple receive a box of letters written to her by her cousin, Daisy who worked as a typist in Whitehall in 1942. Claire is fascinated by the correspondence, which describes Daisy's visits each month to see a painting at the National Gallery and she decides to follow in her footsteps, read a letter a month and search out each painting for herself. It's the only thing that makes her life bearable, for she blames Rob for their child's death. When he fails to turn up to meet her because of a business meeting, she is attacked by thugs and suffers a miscarriage without his support.

What Claire really wants is to be loved and although Rob does love her, she rejects him for letting her down, something he didn't do deliberately. She sets out to destroy him, instead of trying to move forwards, in fact she actually enjoys hurting him. After a while, Claire's attitude towards Rob and her constant introspection began to grate as I felt it had gone on for too long. He has also lost a child and now he is losing his wife. I wondered why Claire hadn't been having counselling to sort out her thoughts and feelings. I didn't feel that I wanted to root for her and instead, my sympathies lay with Rob, who displayed the patience of a saint. However, I did realise that without Claire's emotional inner turmoil, there would have been no story.

And the mood soon changes. She goes from despair to hope on seeing the paintings and learning how Daisy's life unfolds, in epistolary form. She can't help acknowledging the parallels between the two. When Claire meets art auctioneer, Dominic at the gallery and embarks on a monthly tryst with him, her life changes radically. She creates a fantasy life for herself in her obsession both for Dominic and Daisy's unfolding life in the letters and is soon in danger of losing everything that she cares about.

It's a well-written story, thought-provoking too, with some inventive twists and satisfactory closure - all ends happily. Through it, we learn something about the privations of war in England through Daisy's life and times. And if you like art history, the author has researched thoroughly and highlighted some wonderful paintings, with vivid descriptions and analyses, along with snippets about some of the artists, ranging from Titian to Renoir. You can actually view them if you scan the QR code at the start of each chapter with your Smart phone or download a free app if you have a BlackBerry or iPhone. You will be taken to each painting at the National Gallery, with information about the artists.

This is a worthy first novel for Camilla Macpherson, who is part-lawyer, part-author. She is a winner of the Promis Prize for short stories and has been shortlisted for several other writing awards. Her website is at:
www.camillamacpherson.com

'Pictures at an Exhibition' is published by  Arrow Books,2012.

Madame Proust and the Kosher Kitchen

I borrowed this book from the local library in an effort to support the service, along with Barbara Kingsolver's The Lacuna, which I gave up on quite early. The librarian said her husband said it all came together towards the end. Unfortunately I didn't get that far and if a book doesn't hook me at the beginning, I'll never know how great it turned out to be.

Three-tiered plot

I persevered with Madame Proust's 1890s unpublished diary and learnt a lot about son Marcel in the process - her smothering love for him and his repressed homosexuality, his asthma attacks, (the physical reaction to his repression no doubt) and the louche lifestyle to which he was attracted. Author Kate Taylor recreates the times well through narrator Marie Prevost, who lives in Canada and carries out her research in Paris. But I found the backtracking and timeline switches hard to follow and became confused with the various characters in a three-tiered plot that didn't work. The constant time changes prevented the plot from moving forwards and this interfered with the flow for me.

Meanwhile, Sarah Bensimon, who lives in Toronto with foster parents, returns to her birth family's apartment in Paris after the war to search for them. People are reluctant to talk but she finds a witness to their murder in Auschwitz. In Toronto, she develops an ultra kosher kitchen and cooks kosher versions of French cuisine. I couldn't figure out what this had to do with the story although the title is ambiguous as it implies that Madame Proust  kept a kosher kitchen. She was also Jewish though, which makes Marcel so and Sarah's son Max, like Marcel, is stringing along an adoring young woman called Marie. Both Maries are thwarted when they learn the truth. I'm not sure why the men needed to be Jewish as the story would have stood as well had they been Catholic or Hindu but I was hoping to learn more about the French collaboration to transport their Jewish population to Drancy, transit camp to Auschwitz during the war and this wasn't forthcoming.

I'm not sure what the kosher kitchen had to do with anything or other authorial discussions about language for example or the Dreyfus affair. I think it was about different types of love - unrequited, motherly and gay. However, it was well written and researched and I enjoyed the author's take on Madame Proust's unpublished letters.

Madame Proust and the Kosher Kitchen is by Kate Taylor and published by Chatto & Windus, 2003.