Book Review: Lake of Widows by Liza Perrat (X Liza Perrat) #RBRT # Women’s Historical Fiction #1970s France

This novel begins with the introduction of Adrienne Chevalier, wife of a psychiatrist, who lives in an upscale area of Lyon in a chic apartment. Her children are away for the summer and her life is desolate, reduced to keeping the apartment perfect for her controlling husband, who ignores her. One brutally hot day, she forces herself to walk to the grocery store in the oppressive weather to buy food for her husband’s lunch, but when she gets to the checkout station, something snaps. She walks out of the store and wanders off, eventually accepting the offer of a ride by a hippie driving by in a van. He takes her out of the city to the encampment where he lives with others, raising their own food and enjoying sexual freedom. Adrienne hides there, reveling in being free of her husband and the strictures of her life.

Eventually, however, she becomes disheartened with the hippie life style and flees to rural Sainte-Marie-du-Lac, a resort area where she had been with her husband. There the owner of the idyllic resort, L’Auberge de Léa, takes pity on her bedraggled state and poverty and gives Adrienne a job that pays, along with a place to stay.   

While there, she discovers a leather pouch of valuable coins, which unknown to her, belongs to Blanche Larue. Blanche is the second prominent woman in this book populated by women. Blanche has been trapped by her husband’s infidelity, but is trying to adjust to being newly widowed and free. Her life had always been dictated by the social norms of the village and she has had to gracefully accept her husband’s dalliances.

The third woman, Suzanne Rossignol, was the original owner of the auberge many years earlier, and Adrienne finds her journal in the room where she is staying. She discovers that Suzanne’s beloved husband left home to fight in WWI and returned a stranger with a mind destroyed by his experiences. As he became increasingly and erratically brutal to Suzanne, she had to deal with him while providing for them both.

Three women, each in a timeless struggle of oppression and patriarchy, tradition and abuse, against a beautiful backdrop of the tranquil French countryside. Their stories are linked by the social strictures of the time: Adrienne by her husband’s diabolical lengths to find and control her, Blanche by the social stigma of blatantly unfaithful husband, and Suzanne by a village that expects her to deal with the daily danger of her mentally ill husband.

How these stories tie together will surprise the reader.

This is an interesting read about a time of great change in the lives of women, and the author deals with the subject in a fascinating way through the lives of these three main characters, delving into their desires and ambitions and love of family. There are many other women in this book and without exception they are well-drawn and believable, with foibles and talents and dreams. If I had any criticism it is that the men are less so. Emile, Adrienne husband, is sharply presented as a cruel, self-centered man without a shred of empathy, determined to control her at all costs. While the reader is not introduced to Blanche’s husband except by recollection, he seems equally remote, uncaring of his wife, and amoral. Suzanne’s husband is probably the worst example of what happened to men who returned from WWI, alternately physically aggressive and catatonic. Bambou, the hippy who takes Adrienne out of the city is almost a caricature of what people think of as a hippy – warm and loving, handsome with long hair and blue eyes, and definitely enjoying sex not only with Adrienne but also with the other women in the encampment.

That is not to say I did not enjoy this book! The author paints a lyrical portrait of the French countryside in details of colors and smells and landscape. I fell in love with the lake community, with its traditions and its food.  It’s definitely a place I would love to visit. The author makes the reader feel great empathy for each of the main characters and to recognize what our own mothers and grandmothers dealt with in their times.  

I strongly recommend this book to readers who enjoy women’s fiction set in a turbulent historical time.

About the author:

Liza Perrat grew up in Wollongong, Australia, where she worked as a general nurse and midwife for fifteen years. When she met her French husband on a Bangkok bus, she moved to France, where she has been living with her family for over twenty years. She works part-time as a French-English medical translator, and as a novelist. Since completing a creative writing course twelve years ago, several of her short stories have won awards, notably the Writers Bureau annual competition of 2004 and her stories have been published widely in anthologies and small press magazines. Spirit of Lost Angels is the first in her French historical trilogy, The Bone Angel series. The second – Wolfsangel – was published in October, 2013, and the third, Blood Rose Angel, was published in November, 2015. She is a founding member of the author collective, Triskele Books and reviews books for BookMuse.

You can find her

On her website: www.lizaperrat.com

Her blog: http://lizaperrat.blogspot.com

On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Liza-Perrat-232382930192297/timeline/