SRP Book Review #27: The Virgin Blue

The Virgin Blue

Tracy Chevalier

This book, which I believe Tracy Chevalier wrote before Girl With a Pearl Earring, reminded me an awful lot of The Weight of Water by Anita Shreve. It uses the same concept of alternating a historical plot with present day events, and both modern heroines are facing similar issues.

The modern story follows Ella, a woman with French ancestry who moves to France because of her husband's work. They decide to live in a small French town and Ella gets involved with a local librarian while researching her geneology. The "flashback" sequences follow Isabelle, who has married into a Calvinist family who does not completely accept her because of her red hair, profession as a midwife (Ella is also a midwife), and her loyalty to the virgin Mary (Calvinists were strictly opposed to any vestiges of Catholic "intermediary" saints, especially Mary).

The Virgin Blue starts out with fairly long chapters clearly separated into medieval and current time periods, but at the denoument the events are blended together in a rapid succession that was a little disorienting, but suited the narrative, since the events themselves were confused.

There were some hints at the supernatural in the form of mysterious connections between Ella and other female descendents of Isabelle that were never fully explored. I would have liked either more of this, making it a true ghost story, or more ambiguity, with more plausible "rational" explanations.