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Trespass: From the Sunday Times bestselling author of The Gustav Sonata

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Listening to it has been an absolute delight. I loved everything about it, including eventually the acquired taste, anti-hero narrator Merivel.

Rose Tremain | The Booker Prizes Rose Tremain | The Booker Prizes

In her bungalow on the disputed boundary, Audrun keeps herself and her meagre possessions spotlessly clean. But she cannot imagine breaking away to begin a new life, separated from the dramatic landscape she has known and loved all her life. Rose Tremain can write herself across any literary boundary'; 'an intelligent and terrifyingly plausible meditation The Sunday Telegraph, Seven MagazineTwo things drew me to Rose Tremain’s latest novel, “Trespass.” One was the fact that it was set in the Cévennes mountains of the Central Massif (south central France, a region I know well), and the second is that it was described as being “very dark.” I love France and have spent many happy years there, and I love well-written “dark” books. Another form of trespass lies buried in the bitter history between Aramon and Audrun. After their adored mother's death, Aramon was encouraged by their father to join in abusing Audrun, the household's one remaining female member. Trespass, in the sense of sin or wrong-doing, has poisoned the atmosphere in the Mas Lunel ever since. Starving and neglected hunting dogs, penned close to the ruined house, are symptomatic of the desperate squalor that has overcome Aramon, unable to come to terms with his disgusting past. Robert Merivel, son of a glove-maker, and a trainee physician who does not take his studies seriously, comes to the attention of the King Charles II. Merivel lives for pleasure and is something of a rake, and after curing the King's Spaniel, becomes a favoured courtier. The King decides to marry him to one of his mistresses which gives him a Norfolk estate. Alas Merivel transgresses the one law that he is forbidden to break and is brutally cast out from his newfound paradise. Thus begins Merivel’s journey to self-knowledge, which will take him down into the lowest depths of seventeenth-century society. Along the way, Tremain gives us a history lesson of the Cévennes. She tells us about the decline of the once thriving silk industry, the poor working conditions Audrun once endured in the underwear factory in Ruasse, the way the Cévenol people never hoped for more than what they already had. But it’s the sense of isolation, of ever-present menace that really captures the spirit of the area and adds to the darkness of this book. The woods of holm oak and beech and chestnut and pine are lovely, but Tremain never lets us forget that its loveliness is fraught with danger.

Trespass by Rose Tremain | Goodreads Trespass by Rose Tremain | Goodreads

It says in the blurb "From the moment he (Anthony Verey) arrives at the Mas Lunel, a frightening and unstoppable series of consequences is set in motion...." Between 1988 and 1995, Tremain was employed as a teacher of creative writing at East Anglia University and in 2013, she was appointed its Chancellor. Author Tremain has held multiple life partners over the course of her life. First, she was married to Jon Tremain, with whom she has a daughter named Eleanor, born one year after the marriage. Eleanor chose the career path of acting. Tremain’s marriage with Jon Tremain lasted for only five years. After that, she married a theater director named Jonathan Dudley in 1982. Her second marriage lasted for nine years. Since 1992, Tremain has been living with Richard Holmes, although they have not officially married. Tremain and Richard live in Norfolk. The writing influences of Tremain include authors like Gabriel Garcia Marquez and William Golding. As a novelist of historical fiction, she likes to approach her subjects from different angles and concentrate her attention on the glamorous outsiders. In 2009, Tremain donated one of her short stories to the Ox-Tales project, which is 4 collections of stories penned by 38 UK novelists. Her story was featured in the Earth collection. Themes: London, John Pearce, the court of King Charles II, Celia Clemence, Bidnold in Norfolk, Elias Finn, Bedlam, Quakers, Katherine, the Great Plague, 1666 the Great Fire of London, Margaret.Trespass works best through its silences; we feel horribly, for example, for Kitty, who is never allowed to give free rein to her jealousy of Anthony's relationship with Veronica, and who must cope, to boot, with being a rotten painter. Similarly, the minor characters at the edges of the novel – the mayor who lectures Kitty and Veronica on their profligate use of water in the garden, or the Parisian schoolgirl whose alienation from her new rural home tops and tails the story – provide an articulate commentary on our relationship to our surroundings. "They both knew that it was borrowed," writes Tremain of Kitty and Veronica's fragile sense of belonging. "Because if you left your own country, if you left it late, and made your home in someone else's country, there was always a feeling that you were breaking an invisible law, always the irrational fear that, one day, some 'rightful owner' would arrive to take it all away, and you would be driven out . . ." Although the Mas Lunel can definitely be restored to its former idyllic beauty, Aramon has not kept it up. Tremain writes, "...thousands of Cévenol people had seemed to forget their role as caretakers of the land. Diseases came to the trees. The vine terraces crumbled. The rivers silted up. And nobody seemed to notice or care." No, Aramon doesn’t care. He only cares about getting out. He has no love for the Mas Lunel or the land around it. In this region live a sister and brother, Audrun and Aramon Lunel. Aramon lives in the family home, Mas Lunel, that he inherited from his father. Audrun lives in a small bungalow in sight of Mas Lunel. Aramon is a misanthropic, mean-spirited drunk who has let his home go to ruin. It stinks, the olive groves are overgrown, and the hunting dogs are starving to death. Audrun hates her brother for reasons that are divulged towards the middle of the book. She inherited some land from her father and she loves to walk on it. In her bungalow, she feels like an outcast, seeing few people and staying very much to herself. Her only peace comes from her home and land. One day as she is doing her daily walk on her land, she sees Arumel stealing some of her saplings and fallen brush. Feelings of hate roil up in her but she lets him take the wood with her permission. I found this book quite intriguing. The character of Robert Merivel is sympathetic and does a believable character arc, changing from a shallow person into a thoughtful physician.

Rose Tremain - Wikipedia

This is such an enjoyable historical fiction book set in the 17th Century during the reign of King Charles II. The protagonist Merivel is likable and relatable, despite making some bad decisions, and I really enjoyed following the complex relationship between him and the King and the difficult situations Merivel finds himself in due to his affiliation with royalty. This could have been awful, but it is rather good and there are some very funny passages; watch out for the Indian Nightingale and Merivel's attempts at painting (inventing impressionism in the 1660s only to be ridiculed). Rose Tremain is not only a prolific writer, but she is a great one. Each of her novels is different in theme, tenor, and topic. Trespass, her most recent book, is a dark, eerie and grim themed novel with a definite gothic undertone. Set in the southern part of France, in an area known as the Cevennes region, the land itself is portrayed as something feral and alive, so filled with lush growth, insects, snakes and sounds, that it has a life of its own. The only quibble I have with this book is a maddening habit of Tremain’s to write "and now he, Anthony" or "now that she, Kitty...." For god’s sake, Ms. Tremain, we know who you’re talking about. The reference is distracting. Even though grammatically correct, this habit really got on my nerves and it reminded me of something a lesser writer would do, not someone of Tremain’s status. Most splendidly narrated by Rupert Degas, we are introduced to the young Robert Merivel and his rise and fall through glittering seventeenth-century society.

I have the same problem and pleasures with this historical novel set during the reign of Charles II as I do with the author's Music and Silence. Tremain's new novel is Trespass. Set in the Cevennes region of France, Trespass is about grotesque family relationships, collusion, shame, deception, land disputes, revenge with a capital R and a nasty discovery on the river bank. Successful garden designer Veronica Verey and her less successful painter partner Kitty are among the many Brits who have made this area their second home. Veronica's brother Anthony is a rich, disillusioned, 60-ish retired antiques dealer who moves in with Veronica and Kitty while he hunts for a suitable home/showcase in the area for his beloved antiques. His interest in possibly purchasing a dilapidated farmhouse is the catalyst for the events of the novel. It was the childhood home of siblings Aramon and Audrun. Aramon is an addict letting alcohol lay waste to his life. Audrun is surrounded by cocoon of bitterness and destruction. I am not going to go into a summary of the story because you can get that from the other reviewers. What I will say is that Rose Tremain has a lovely way with words. Some of them were so beautiful that I found myself reading them several times before moving on:

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