I Write - Decade Edition - Roaring 20's

Review of Reinvention of Love by Helen Humphreys

I liked the content and Humphrey's style. I wasn't sure I was going to enjoy a story based on an affair, but I found drawn in by the characters and the tragedy of their situation.

The story itself is based on true historical facts and I found myself not liking the over the top personality of Victor Hugo. He seemed to suck the life out of everyone around him.... particularly his wife, Adele, and his daughter Dede - who he believed was the daughter of his wife and her lover (who was not able to father children). Victory Hugo survived all his children, except Dede, who he had committed to an asylum where she lived for 40 years.

The story is told mainly from the point of view of Charles and Adele. Their affair and how it affects their lives and the lives of others around them over time is the substance of the book.

I liked the descriptions of Paris - particularly the wild orchard of apples in Jardin du Luxembourg, which is where Adele and Charles often met when they had Adele's youngest, Dede, with them. I love how he returned to this garden at the end... describing the new orchard as "espaliered, each one trained carefully to grow its fruit in straight lines". The change is bittersweet.

"Love doesn't fail. We do." is how Charles sums up their relationship... and I love the concept as it is so true. I think Adele felt this way too. She stayed with a husband who retaliated after he found out about the affair. In his retaliation, he had affairs, but he also let his personality overshadow every member of his family.

Charles also talks about his writing saying "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." I don't fully believe this as I write to find out who and what I believe, but I understand that if you try to capture a moment and pin it down, there is an element of controlling the experience.

Later Charles says "I write this story down so I can enter it again... Writing does not recreate the moment so much as it stops it. And if the moment is stopped, one is able, finally to get a clear look at it.... When a moment is in real time, it is in flight." I like this view.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/10718251-carolyn