Literary Crushes

By Kim

As an avid reader from the age of three and a sucker for a good love story, I confess I’ve fallen in love with more fictional men than real ones in my lifetime. Most are transitory infatuations that last only as long as it takes for me to finish a novel or until they do or say something that annoys me, whichever comes first. I don’t remember their names a month later.

Some remain with me, luring me back to their pages so I can again experience that heady rush. I don’t always get it. At nineteen, I loved Emily Bronte’s Heathcliff. Twenty years later, I wonder why. My opinion about Diana Gabaldon’s Jamie Fraser has not changed since 1992, however. I’m sure I’ll feel much the same about Cathy Marie Buchanan’s Tom Cole and Stephanie Cowell’s imagined version of Claude Monet.

I met my first literary love at twelve, when my mother gave me my first copy of Jane Eyre. Ever since, Edward Rochester is like the bad boy ex-boyfriend I’d take back in a heartbeat, damn the consequences. I forgive him the moodiness, the mind games, and even the mad wife imprisoned in the attic. Each time a movie version comes out, I’m at the theater and praying that the actor in that role fits the image in my mind. He never does, though Toby Stephens was my favorite.

My eldest daughter is now almost twelve and she, too, has fallen in love for the first time. The object of her affection: Peeta Mellark from The Hunger Games. As soon as she finished book three, she immediately picked up book one again, so she could have “her” Peeta back the way she wants to remember him.

How about you? Who are your literary crushes?

Author Stephanie Cowell Remembers Madeleine L’Engle

By Kim

Photo by Russell Clay

My ten-year-old daughter recently started reading A Wrinkle in Time for school. Part of her assignment is to write three times a week in a reader response journal. Creativity is encouraged, so I put a little bug in her ear. “You know,” I said to her, “A writer friend of mine knew Madeleine L’Engle well. I bet she could tell you some interesting things about her that you won’t read about in any book.”


My daughter’s face lit up. She loves the book and she also loves surprising her teacher with unexpected tweaks that turn an ordinary assignment into something special.


I told her about Stephanie Cowell, showed her my copy of Claude and Camille, and explained that Stephanie considers Madeleine her writing mentor in much the same way that I consider Stephanie mine. I’m not sure how much of that she got because she was too busy looking at the painting on the cover (hardcover version, not the image shown here). She loves art and knew all about the impressionists, including Claude Monet.


“I want to read this,” she said.

I bit my lip as I remembered a few beautifully sensual but firmly R-rated scenes. “In a few years,” I said.


Make that six years at least.


Stephanie kindly agreed to the interview, so my daughter and I brainstormed a few questions. The questions are hers and the answers are geared toward fifth graders, but I thought our readers might enjoy them. I share them here in honor of the 50th anniversary of A Wrinkle in Time’s publication.


When and where did you meet Madeleine L’Engle? 


I met Madeleine when I took a writing class she gave at a convent for nuns in New York City. She was very good friends with them. Twenty writers were accepted and there was a waiting list. I was lucky to get in. We all sat around a large oval table and she gave us things to write about.

Madeleine L'Engle - Square Fish Books

2) What was her personality like? Was she easy to talk to? 

She was easy to talk to; she was warm and funny and loved people. She believed the great artists of the world were enlightened beings and saints. She always talked about Saint Bach. Of course it took a little bit of time to get used to her because she was very tall and a little bit like a queen. She wore long dresses down to her feet with beautiful embroidery; she was nearly six feet tall and she had a very low voice.

Do you know what inspired her to write A Wrinkle in Time? 


Goodness, she has written about this in her books and I’ll try to remember. She was terribly interested in science then and the universe and time travel. There is a particular area of physics called quantum physics which talks about time and energy waves and matter (the stuff that makes up the universe and everything in it) and many complicated things. One of the many ideas was there were wrinkles in time in the universe where you could leap over a lot of distance or time at once. She combined this with her sense of God and that people should be themselves. She felt love was the most important thing in the world. Also…Madeleine lost her own father when she was eighteen years old. He had been sick a lot of her life and I think she would have liked to go back in time and rescue him and that went into the novel. But when she had finished the novel, no one would publish it. Twenty-six publishers refused it. The one who finally took it thought it wouldn’t sell. They said it was too complicated for children!


How did she help you with your writing?


She loved my writing and when I asked her if she would read my first novel, she said yes. Then she helped me find a publisher and sent me a huge bunch of flowers when I found one. I could always talk to her about writing. She was like a second mother to me.


What were her favorite things to do? 

She loved to play classical music on the piano and to travel and to teach and speak to people, and of course to write. She loved to go to church. She loved opera and ballet and reading and museums. If she lent you a book, you had to PROMISE to return it. And she loved to cook but never doing dishes! When she was young, she was an actress. Oh and she loved her dogs!


What was her house like? 


She had a house in the country and an apartment in the city. The apartment was a short walk from where I lived. It was on a high floor and you could see the sun set over the river from the windows. The rooms were very large and she had thousands of books and a grand piano and many old things which had been in her family for a long time. She had many pictures of her husband who was a famous actor. Her country house was an old farmhouse and there was a path by the side of the house where she used to walk up and down at night and ask God why she couldn’t sell A Wrinkle in Time.


If you want to learn more about the friendship between Madeleine and Stephanie, here is an article Stephanie wrote about the subject. Have you read A Wrinkle in Time? Tell us your thoughts!

A Review of Stephanie Cowell's CLAUDE AND CAMILLE

By Kim

Synopsis (from the book jacket):

In the mid nineteenth century, a young man named Claude Monet decided that he would rather endure a difficult life painting landscapes than take over his father’s nautical supplies business in a French seaside town. Against his father’s will, and with nothing but a dream and an insatiable urge to create a new style of art that repudiates the Classical Realism of the time, he set off for Paris.

But once there, he was confronted with obstacles: an art world that refused to validate his style, extreme poverty, and a war that led him away from his home and friends. Except there were bright spots as well: his deep, enduring friendships with men named Renoir, Cezanne, Pissarro, Manet – a group who together would come to be known as the Impressionists, and who supported one another through the difficult years. But even more illuminating was his lifelong love, Camille Doncieux, a beautiful, upper-class Parisian girl who threw away her privileged life to be by the side of the defiant painter and embrace their lively Bohemian life.

His muse, his best friend, his passionate lover, and the mother to his two children, Camille stayed with Monet – and believed in his work – even as they lived in wretched rooms, were sometimes kicked out of those, and often suffered the indignities of destitution. She comforted him during his frequent emotional torments, even when he would leave her for long periods to go off on his own to paint in the countryside.

But Camille had her own demons – secrets that Monet could never penetrate, including one that, when eventually revealed, would pain him so deeply that he would never fully recover from its impact. Although Camille never once stopped loving the painter with her entire being, she was not immune to the loneliness that often came with being his partner.

A vividly rendered portrait of both the rise of Impressionism and of the artist at the center of the movement, CLAUDE AND CAMILLE, is above all, a love story of the highest romantic order.

About Stephanie Cowell (from the book jacket):

Stephanie is the author of Nicolas Cooke: Actor, Soldier, Physician, Priest; The Physician of London (American book Award, 1996); and The Players: A Novel of the Young Shakespeare. She is also the author of Marrying Mozart, which was translated into seven languages and has been optioned for a movie.

Review:

Normally I can breeze through a 330 page novel in an afternoon. CLAUDE AND CAMILLE took me five days. Like a Monet painting, I wanted to linger with it, to savor the composition, the colors, the emotions within. That Stephanie Cowell was raised by and around artists is evident from both the lush, visual imagery and the conversations between Monet and his contemporaries. She writes as a painter paints. A sensitive reader will, in turn, read in the manner of an art lover gazing upon a canvas.

Even if you don’t love art, you will be moved.

The bond between the two protagonists is so consuming I physically ached for them. I rejoiced in their triumphs, wept with them in their despair, and forgave them their trespasses. Camille may have been Monet’s muse, but there would be no water lily paintings today if it weren’t also for the love and devotion of Cezanne, Pissarro, Manet and Renoir. The power of friendship between these men can not be discounted.

Until recently, the only images I had seen of Claude Monet were photographs of an old man in his garden at Giverny. That man appears in the book, though a much younger Claude is at the forefront. On Stephanie Cowell’s website, you can see a stunning portrait of Monet as he would have appeared when he met Camille Doncieux. I confess to having a bit of a crush on him before even opening the book. After hearing his voice so vividly in my head for over 300 pages he’s flesh and blood to me; a loving, moody and virile man. If I were an upper-class Parisian girl with a stuffy fiancé, I’d be tempted to throw it all away for him, too.

I considered skimming a brief biography of Monet in between reading sessions, but refrained, and I urge anyone reading the book to do the same. You will only find facts about Monet there. Cowell offers something far richer; a glimpse into the artist’s soul.

I don’t advise reading the last thirty pages in public. Have tissues handy.

Today, I will visit the Dallas Museum of Art to see an exhibit called The Lens of Impressionism. I have already warned my companion that if she finds me lingering in front of certain Monet canvases she should forgive me the tears that will surely flow. Thanks to CLAUDE AND CAMILLE, part of me will always feel as though I stood beside Monet, watching him paint the Normandy shore.

CLAUDE AND CAMILLE is available at bookstores throughout the United States and Canada. You can also purchase it here at amazon.com.

Author and book cover images were taken from the author's website. Author photo by Russell Clay.