This section contains 738 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) |
SOURCE: Harman, Claire. “A Poet and a Mermaid.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 5069 (26 May 2000): 21.
In the following review of The Looking Glass, Harman praises Roberts for vivid, sensuous prose that portrays the drama and humor of everyday life.
Michèle Roberts's eleventh novel [The Looking Glass] returns to nineteenth-century French provincial life with a multilayered narrative centred on a poet called Gérard Colbert. Colbert himself is an elusive figure; it is the women who surround him who tell the story and the humblest of them, the orphaned maidservant Geneviève, whose point of view dominates the book.
Geneviève is a daydreamer and storyteller who is sent from the convent to be servant to a widowed café-owner in the seaside village of Blessetot. The details of everyday life are lovingly evoked, as the orphan learns household and garden management, cooks plenty of delicious food and lives in...
This section contains 738 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) |