Thursday, December 8, 2016

The Virgin Blue

The Virgin Blue
by Tracy Chevalier



Genre: Historical Fiction

Synopsis:  Meet Ella Turner and Isabelle du Moulin—two women born centuries apart, yet bound by a fateful family legacy. When Ella and her husband move to a small town in France, Ella hopes to brush up on her French, qualify to practice as a midwife, and start a family of her own. Village life turns out to be less idyllic than she expected, however, and a peculiar dream of the color blue propels her on a quest to uncover her family’s French ancestry. As the novel unfolds—alternating between Ella’s story and that of Isabelle du Moulin four hundred years earlier—a common thread emerges that unexpectedly links the two women. Part detective story, part historical fiction, The Virgin Blue is a novel of passion and intrigue that compels readers to the very last page.
from GoodReads

Review:  I listened to this book in the car and I struggled with it a bit because there was so much French in it that never was translated into English.  If I had been reading the book, I could have looked some up on the internet and had it translated.  There seemed to be stanzas in French that were important to the story (one of the Psalms) and that I was missing out on.  I also had a problem with the book because Ella was looked down on so much by the French people in the small town in which she lived and it made me dislike the setting so much plus I didn't really like Ella's whining.  I was intrigued by the story of Isabelle and I wish that I could have just fast forwarded to the chapters about her.  Although even Isabelle's story slowed down in the middle.  There were a lot of details that I just didn't follow in the historical part but perhaps that is because I know absolutely nothing about the 1600s in France.  I feel that there could have been more explanation of what was going on but then I also felt that the story didn't move fast enough for me.  Towards the end, I thought I was going to have to abandon the book because of something horrible that I thought was going to happen.  I just couldn't handle what I thought was to come.  But something slightly different happened and it wasn't described at all so I wasn't as emotionally torn apart as I thought I would be.

Rating: 2 stars

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