Trespass

This joyless book features two pairs of siblings, vastly different from each other, who end up being connected through a crumbling yellow farmhouse. There is a hovering sense of foreboding accompanied by the ever-present mistral that seems to stir up shameful family secrets. Misbehavior abounds with infraction and violation of both persons and property. There is a definite gloomy mood to this book that is as grey and murky as the cover.

This was my first book by Rose Tremain, but it won't be my last. Her writing is melodious when she's writing about the beautiful countryside of southern France and quite explicit when she is describing the dysfunctional relationships between the characters in this book. Having painted this dismal picture, show more I have to say I was so impressed with the writing that I look forward to another of Tremain's books. I'm optimistic that some of her other books are of a more hopeful nature. show less

Sometimes when watching a TV ad for a fragrance or a soft drink or almost anything, my wife or I will jokingly say, “Go ahead. Find the unattractive person in that ad.” We say it because it’s impossible to do. While reading Rose Tremain’s weighty “Trespass,” one could say the converse: “Okay, find the attractive or sympathetic person.” Because you pretty much can’t. “Trespass” portrays the lives a small number of people in late middle age as they progress into dotage. It also contains a hard-won balance, a magisterial justice, along with its brilliant depictions of Cevenol France. Along the way we witness true, anguished, human motivation, and at the end of the day, we have the unmistakably brilliant Rose Tremain show more behind it all.

Our intrepid author introduces us first to Anthony Verey, a once-almost-wealthy antiques dealer with a shop in a posh section of London. He realizes during a dinner with rich friends that his chance at real wealth has passed him by somehow, and that his celebrity isn’t what it once was. He realizes with excruciating pain that he is no longer spoken of in hushed terms at art openings, he no longer was "the" Anthony Verey. This timid, jealous, inadequate, precious mama’s boy must find a way out of his over-the-hill predicament. He settles of course for moving to the south of France, to the Cevennes Mountains, to be with his beloved sister so they can sort it all out. What gets sorted out, however ghastly it is, actually serves Verey rather well. Ms. Tremain presents grand timeless issues, like gentrification of old land holdings, jealousy, betrayal, greed, and the cruel horrors perpetrated within families. She sets these forces forward in an inexorable march of tragedy and retribution. It has a cinematic feel to it, one in which the audience may cheer for the wronged to come out on top, no matter the means. Our author even puts this Hollywood image into the head of one of her protagonists, as events unfold, and police inspectors ask their inevitable questions.

As always, Rose Tremain presents vivid pictures, both of outward nature, and of inward nature. The desperate ambition, the envy, the smugness of the socially superior, the grasping of the commercially opportune – our author lays these all out for our inspection, and in doing so, holds our modern adoration for money up in a mirror for us. She also reminds us that each society has its victims, and some of these victims so utterly lack for any protection or redress, that only tragedy can follow.

Ms. Tremain also invites us to decide which transgression lends its name to the novel. The British antiques dealer mulls over whether to purchase the French farmhouse, and the locals consider this a form of trespassing. Audrun, the current owner’s sister, unwell, ashamed, suffers the further indignity of being accused of trespassing because of her bungalow’s location. Anthony trespasses on his sister, and her happiness, and we also see how the locals trespass on the living forest that blankets the hills.

Once again, Orange Prize-winning Rose Tremain reinforces her powerful reputation. She has turned out a deep and serious piece of fiction, without perhaps the soaring, dreamlike escape of “The Colour” or the comic touches of “The Road Home.” This is a more contemplative work, filled with cautionary examples of greed and injustice, but also containing a grandeur, a momentous justice, wrought by the book's character seemingly least capable ot it. Recommended very highly.

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This book gripped me from the first. This is a tale set in the Cevennes, a still isolated area of Southern France. Here are farms - 'Mas', still worked by the families who have lived here for generations, or else bought by foreigners from England, the Low Countries, who want to 'live the dream'.

We meet alcoholic Aramon, his lonely sister Audrun, who are Cevennes through and through. We meet long term English residents Veronica and her lover Kitty. And then we meet Anthony, Veronica's brother, who thinks he'd like to move to France.

All have secrets. All have lives that are in some ways unsatisfactory. And from the moment that Anthony arrives in France, a series of events, with unlooked for and utterly unwanted consequences is set in show more motion.

I was involved, even as I found each character in some way unlikeable - there are no dashing heroes and heroines here.

I believed in the lives of each of these characters, and wanted to know how the story would unfold. I relished the description of this part of the Cevennes. I read on willingly, enjoying the story, and how it was told. show less

The Book Report: Two pairs of aging siblings, all damaged goods from various sorts of parental abuse and neglect, collide in one of France's most beautiful areas...the Cevennes range...and manage to make a complete hash of their own, their friends', and even perfect strangers' lives while imagining themselves to be acting in accord with the highest and best principles of mankind. Nothing good comes of anyone's best-intentioned acts because no one has learned what good intentions look like. Tremain explores the results of repression and suppression to their logical extremes in this book.

My Review: There are no new stories, only new ways of telling them. This isn't even a new way of telling an old, tired, and frankly quite offensive show more story. I will not scruple from spoilers from this sentence forward. Stop reading now if you want, despite my urgent advice, to read this tiresome bilge.

Audrun Lunel is a slow child, youngest of her family, and probably not the daughter of the man who raised and molested her, as she was born very shortly after the end of WWII and her mother was alone...well, anyway, incest is about more than genetics. Her brother, at the very least her half-brother that is, molested her too, all after her saintly mama dies. This is a story I simply do not want to read again, ever, since I survived incestuous abouse by my mother and don't care to see the culturally acceptable image of men as abusers continue unchallenged.

Anthony Verey, English poofter and antiques dealer, is in thrall to his memories of his glammy mommy, Lavender, a South African transplant to England, and a woman without a maternal bone in her body. (My mother was Southern, but that's a good description of her, too.) His fat lesbian older sister comes in for most of the verbal abuse his mother can deal out (same with my family), because the sister is not a fashion accessory child. The sister works hard to protect little Anthony, and sets up a lifetime pattern of dependency.

In the end, Anthony is shot by Audrun for being a rosbif carpetbagger, after which she frames her disgusting older brother for the crime. Yay. Creepy queerboy is dead, not before killing his sister's relationship to a perfectly nice if deadly dull woman, and nasty abuser boy goes to prison.

Which is where I want to send these goddamned woman novelists who, when they are absent an idea, think it's perfectly okay to portray their fellow women as victimvictimvictim of horrible, slimy men. It's shouting down the well to say this, but do you not see, Womankind, that this is INSULTING TO *YOU*?!? No woman I know...not one, without exception...is a victimvictimvictim by virtue of her womanliness. Each and every one of the women I know is strong and capable. I resent on their behalf the unquestioned rightness of this kind of claptrap built on the false dichotomy between male abuser and female abused.

Bah. Rotten stuff. show less

Doesn’t every love need to create for itself its own protected space? And if so, why don’t lovers understand better the damage trespass can do?

A brooding, slow-moving, intoxicating novel about two sets of aging brothers and sisters—the close-knit British pair Veronica and Anthony, and the at-daggers French pair Audrun and Aramon—whose paths slowly intertwine, entangle, and irrevocably change the course of everyone’s lives. Tremain is not afraid to explore the darkest corners of love and hate, in families and in romantic relationships both, as well as all the emotions and grey areas in between; there are some tough topics unraveled in these pages, almost in slow motion and in very cinematic language—in nearly pitch-perfect show more counterpoint, giving the reader insight into very different minds facing the same pasts and presents in wholly dissonant ways, in almost poetic tune with the ebbing and flowing of the siblings’ shared season spent in the French countryside, and with the ebbing and flowing of life itself. The way Tremain is able to straddle various genres and themes—psychological fiction, mystery, crime, family drama, inheritance laws, art—and never pigeonhole herself also shows her immense skill, especially with the weight of all she juggles here and yet is able to render very quiet, very still, and almost claustrophobic, like a chamber play or a Bergman film. show less

In a nutshell: A beautiful and haunting novel of lives and memories disrupted by the trespass of truth and secrets.

There is a good range of reviews on Trespass here on LT; it seems most people either love it or hate it. I am in the former camp. While it’s true that most of the characters have few, if any, redeeming characteristics, I still found myself drawn in and caring about them. This is a dark, lyrical book where the bleached landscape is mirrored in the lives of the four main characters who seem to be bleached of all happiness. I don’t want to call it grim, because it isn’t; it is infused with melancholy and lost opportunities but in the absence of innocence and contentment in these lives, one is left with the knowledge of show more what is good and true in one’s own. show less

Rose Tremain’s latest novel (dark, dark, dark) draws parallel lines and connections between two families. Veronica Verey and her brother Anthony were born and raised in the English countryside and are both successful adults in their late 50’s, she a designer of gardens, and he a dealer in antiquities who maintains his shop in London. She is living in southern France with her friend Kitty, a water colorist and photographer.

Living in the same part of France is Aramon Lunel, owner of a lovely stone farmhouse known as Mas Lunel. His sister, Audrun lives in a bungalow on a wooded part of the property. They are not wealthy people, but their property is quite valuable.

Anthony Verey, decrying the loss of customers interested in valuable show more antiques, has come to stay with his sister and decides to look for a piece of retirement property to buy, so that he can be closer to the only person in the world he cares about, his sister, V. If you connect the dots here, you can figure out that Anthony is interested in the Mas Lunel. Once Tremain establishes these relationships, between the families, she creates a very compelling mystery that kept my interest and had me turning pages.

All of the characters are deeply flawed and their parents play a large role in determining the actions they take as adults. Tremain uses the theme of trespass to move the narrative forward:

“In one season, the burned or washed limestone could be green again…And so it went on: from naked stone to forest, in a single generation. On and on. Except there could be trespass. ‘People can come and steal from you, Audrun,’ whispered her mother, Bernadette, long ago. ‘Strangers can come. And others who may not be strangers. Anything that has existence can be stolen or destroyed. So you must be vigilant.’
She’d tried never to cease this vigil…Even in sleep, she’d felt the long weariness of the watcher. But it hadn’t been enough to save her.” (Page 15)

And Kitty has her own thoughts about trespass:

“As Kitty walked towards the water, she wondered: Doesn’t every love need to create for itself its own protected space? And, if so, why don’t lovers understand better the damage trespass can do? It made her furious to think how easily Veronica was colluding with the unspoken open-endedness of Anthony’s visit---as though he was the one who mattered most to her, who had the right to come first and always would, and it was up to her, Kitty, to accept this hierarchy with grown up grace and not make a fuss.” (Page 70)

This idea of trespass, on each other’s lives as well as property, and the role of the parents of each brother and sister, and the tremendous lack of love from the parents all contribute to the actions of the main characters in this deeply disturbing story. Tremain is a wonderful writer and her prose is exquisite. The unsavoury characters, the darkness of the themes, and the final revenge contribute to the harshness of the narrative. It also makes for a totally compelling story. Highly recommended. show less