A review by lisa_mc
Ignorance by Michèle Roberts
2.0
I don’t mind, as a reader, rising to meet the challenge of an author, but there needs to be a payoff, and that’s what’s missing from “Ignorance.”
The book centers on Jeanne and Marie-Angele, who are classmates at Catholic school but not really friends and certainly not peers. Jeanne’s mother does laundry and mending for Marie-Angele’s mother, who runs a grocery with her husband. The disparity between their family situations -- as Jeanne puts it, “she had too much of everything and I didn’t have enough” -- prevents the girls from getting to be close and influences their choices as they grow from schoolgirls into women.
Jeanne’s mother was born Jewish, but changed her surname from Nerinsky to Nerin and poses as Catholic. Roberts gives us this information somewhat matter-of-factly but never explores Madame Nerin’s character. Not that every novel set during World War II has to focus on the treatment of Jews -- and “Ignorance” certainly doesn’t ignore what’s going on, as one character covertly helps people escape and others are turned out of their homes and businesses -- but this seems to be an interesting angle that is brought up and then just dropped.
It would be great to be able to give more of a summary of what the book is about, but there’s not a lot of plot. The book jumps around, back and forth in time and among multiple narrators. We get Jeanne’s point of view first and most often; we also hear from Marie-Angele, Sister Dolly from the school, and Jeanne’s illegitimate daughter. Instead of this giving a fuller picture of events, though, it results in a choppy storyline with large chunks missing, and the ending feels disjointed and too pat.
Roberts’s writing creates vivid images: words “hopped across the pages like toads,” the scent of early spring is “a bitter green perfume sharp as a chisel,” a locked front door “a slap in the face, a slap to the heart.” But ultimately, this novel doesn’t hold together: it’s like flipping through a stack of old pictures -- some beautiful, some horrifying, some simply descriptive -- that are cryptically labeled and out of order.
The book centers on Jeanne and Marie-Angele, who are classmates at Catholic school but not really friends and certainly not peers. Jeanne’s mother does laundry and mending for Marie-Angele’s mother, who runs a grocery with her husband. The disparity between their family situations -- as Jeanne puts it, “she had too much of everything and I didn’t have enough” -- prevents the girls from getting to be close and influences their choices as they grow from schoolgirls into women.
Jeanne’s mother was born Jewish, but changed her surname from Nerinsky to Nerin and poses as Catholic. Roberts gives us this information somewhat matter-of-factly but never explores Madame Nerin’s character. Not that every novel set during World War II has to focus on the treatment of Jews -- and “Ignorance” certainly doesn’t ignore what’s going on, as one character covertly helps people escape and others are turned out of their homes and businesses -- but this seems to be an interesting angle that is brought up and then just dropped.
It would be great to be able to give more of a summary of what the book is about, but there’s not a lot of plot. The book jumps around, back and forth in time and among multiple narrators. We get Jeanne’s point of view first and most often; we also hear from Marie-Angele, Sister Dolly from the school, and Jeanne’s illegitimate daughter. Instead of this giving a fuller picture of events, though, it results in a choppy storyline with large chunks missing, and the ending feels disjointed and too pat.
Roberts’s writing creates vivid images: words “hopped across the pages like toads,” the scent of early spring is “a bitter green perfume sharp as a chisel,” a locked front door “a slap in the face, a slap to the heart.” But ultimately, this novel doesn’t hold together: it’s like flipping through a stack of old pictures -- some beautiful, some horrifying, some simply descriptive -- that are cryptically labeled and out of order.