From the bestselling author of The Dovekeepers comes a love story about one of history's most captivating 'invisible' women: Rachel, the mother of Impressionist painter Camille Pissarro.
Growing up on the idyllic island of St Thomas in the early 1800s, Rachel dreams of life in faraway Paris. Rachel's mother, a pillar of their tight-knit refugee community of Jews who escaped the European Inquisition, has never forgiven her daughter for refusing to live by the rules. But Rachel's fate is not in her own hands: in order to secure the future of her father's business, she is married off to a widower with three children. When her husband dies suddenly and his handsome nephew Frédéric arrives from France to settle the estate, Rachel seizes control of her life, beginning a defiant, passionate love affair that sparks a scandal affecting her entire family, including her favourite son, Camille Pissarro, who will one day become a founder member of the Impressionists and one of history's greatest artists.
Set in a world of lush, exquisite beauty, The Marriage of Opposites shows Alice Hoffman at the height of her considerable powers. The marriage of Rachel and Frédéric is an unforgettable story of an extraordinary woman and her forbidden love.
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I always left my window open at night; despite the warnings I'd been given. CHAPTER ONE, WE FOLLOW THE TURTLES
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(@ScribnerBooks, 27 August 2015, ebook, 384 pages, bought from @AmazonKindle)
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I found this book mesmerising, as I started to read to got to know Rachel and the other characters, they bewitched me. I kept getting lulled and pulled into their story. I thought about the book, the characters and their lives when I wasn't reading the book. They haunted me. I must confess I'd never heard of Pissarro before so came to this book with no prior knowledge of the characters or their world. The vast bulk of the book focuses on Rachel and her life, her first marriage to a much older man and her second marriage, an intense love match that goes against conventions of the time. The fact she is the mother of someone who will become the famous Pissarro is not driving force of this fascinating, beautifully written story.
