The Marriage Of Opposites by Alice Hoffman- 384 pages
Book Blurb:
Growing up on idyllic St. Thomas in the early 1800s, Rachel dreams of life in faraway Paris. Rachel’s mother, a pillar of their small refugee community of Jews who escaped the Inquisition, has never forgiven her daughter for being a difficult girl who refuses to live by the rules. Growing up, Rachel’s salvation is their maid Adelle’s belief in her strengths, and her deep, life-long friendship with Jestine, Adelle’s daughter. But Rachel’s life is not her own. She is married off to a widower with three children to save her father’s business. When her husband dies suddenly and his handsome, much younger nephew, Fréderick, arrives from France to settle the estate, Rachel seizes her own life story, beginning a defiant, passionate love affair that sparks a scandal that affects all of her family, including her favorite son, who will become one of the greatest artists of France.
My Review: 4.5 stars
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Thank you Alice Hoffman for reminding me what a beautifully poetic storyteller you are. This book, The Marriage Of Opposites, is filled with a richness of color, sound and place that completely transforms you to the beaches of St. Thomas and the streets of Paris.
I don’t often read the “blurb” or inside jacket of a book so I really had no idea that this book was based on the life of artist Camille Pissarro. I was reading with the title in mind and indeed thought this was a book about his mother’s marriages, one for business and one for love.
What I liked about this book was the imagery and Hoffman’s ability to impart her own brand of magic into the novel. Motherhood, marriage, race, religion, friendship, nature and best-kept secrets drove the story. The symbolism was so heavily peppered that it would be in an English teacher’s dream to teach. I wish the book would have been shorter as many of the passages were repetitive and due to that, I was ready for the story to move along at some points.
Of course, at the end of the book I was Googling like crazy to learn more about Camille, his mother and father, and see photos of his work online.
Quotes I liked:
Girls did not attend school, but here in the library I found my education.”
-“As I turned the pages, I felt as if there were bees on my fingertips, for I never felt so alive as when reading.”
-“There is an outside of a story, and there is an inside of a story. One is the fruit and may be delicious, but the other is the seed.”
-“What was a husband, after all, if not a partner? Why should I ask for more than that?”
-“You’re feelings about this man may seem earth shattering now, but what is love if not an enchantment?”
-“Truth is different things to different people.”
-“I had a sense that soon enough this would be my long ago.”
-“We’re likely to see our children as we wish to, not as they are.”
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