I do love Mary Stewart’s books for nice tingly tension and fast pace and a great dramatic story. I raced through this one and enjoyed every minute. Her books are always a guaranteed good read.
I do love Mary Stewart’s books for nice tingly tension and fast pace and a great dramatic story. I raced through this one and enjoyed every minute. Her books are always a guaranteed good read.
Linda Martin becomes governess to Philippe, who is heir to a vast estate in France. She begins to suspect that someone is trying to kill Philippe, although is undecided in her suspicions of who is trying to harm him as there are several menacing characters at the chateau, but she is determined to try and keep him safe.
Straightaway, I was intrigued why Linda had concealed that she could speak fluent French. I wondered if it was an instinct to keep a part of herself private, as perhaps with her growing up in the orphanage she had little privacy and so it now came naturally to her to hold something back. But this also allows her (and us!) to effectively ‘eavesdrop’ on people’s conversations, which makes her uncomfortable but she realises it is now too late to come clean and tell the truth. And I sense this ability to hear what she is not supposed to hear will become extremely useful as the book goes on.
There is an interesting mix of personalities and power in the chateau. Philippe is master and owner of the chateau and estate but is only aged nine so is actually powerless in the running of it. His uncle, Leon, runs the chateau and estate but doesn’t have power overall due to not being the owner and being disabled, but he acts and seems to believe like he has overall power, he is very intimidating, seemingly powerless in his wheelchair but clearly not powerless or diminished in personality or determination. Leon’s wife seems in awe of him, and Philippe is just plain scared of him. And Linda is there in the middle, intimidated but fascinated by and slightly charmed by Leon, and sympathetic and friendly and caring to Philippe.
I wondered if this was going to be a Turn of the Screw type book, with the governess caught between the powerful adults and the child she is employed to serve and protect. I also like the couple of references to Jane Eyre and Thornfield.
And then the tension builds dramatically with some seemingly missing medication and a gunshot near Philippe in the woods, and then the tension and menace never stops till the end! I really enjoyed the book and couldn’t put it down, it was a great read and my heart was in my mouth a few times! I was kind of hoping Linda would end up with the Englishman, William Blake, not the Frenchman, Raoul, but oh well, it wasn’t to be.
I do love Mary Stewart’s books and I’ve only read a few of her large collection (I have several on my bookshelves waiting to be read, including The Gabriel Hounds and The Wind off the Small Isles). And this book has also made me feel tempted to re-read The Turn of the Screw by Henry James as it reminded me a bit of that book, and Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte with the mentions of that book in this one.
