January 3, 2011
Maria Jameson, happy in her life as a professor, wife, and mother, finds her life upended when she begins an affair with a man she meets in a shabby Edinburgh, Scotland, bookshop. To help her make sense of her situation, Maria also embarks on a project researching the life and art of French novelist George Sand, who made a name for herself by walking around in trousers and taking beaucoup lovers. As the dry narrative advances, Brackenbury cuts back and forth between Maria's story and Sand's fateful trip to Majorca with Chopin, allowing Maria to discovers deep kinship with the writer, based on the conflicting desires of the female heart. Indeed, Maria's affair makes her life complete; she is happy with her lover and with her family, but the arrangement can't possibly last. While Brackenbury finds some nice parallels and a telling subplot regarding an ailing friend of Maria's, Maria's story of disconnection and reconnection with her family moves slowly, and the interludes in Sand's era often come off as stiff. Maria is deeply interested in her conundrum; readers will be much less so.