Daphne...and subtlety

Following my post about the fragrance and romance of Daphne Odora, here’s where this beguiling scent makes an olfactory appearance in The Lantern. During a work trip to Geneva, Eve makes the short journey around the lake and across the French border is Yvoire with its renowned Labyrinth of the Five Senses. In the maze in the grounds of the château, she meets Dom for the first time.

   I wandered quite happily on my own, unconcerned by the maze but ever more certain with every sense that I had taken a wrong turn somewhere in life. My so-called career was in a dull phase, and as such a reflection of my own limitations; it was one of the reasons I accepted the job that had brought me briefly to Switzerland. As for any social life, it seemed as if high tide had receded, leaving only wrinkles and minor wreckage to show for the fun.

   Then everything changed.

   There, in a living cloister of hornbeam, the air richly perfumed by a line of daphne, there was Dom.

                                                       From The Lantern

Those readers who enjoy subtlety will appreciate how the details in this tiny scene encapsulate many of the novel’s themes. There’s perfume, of course, but with the added implication (for those who are familiar with the show-stopping qualities of daphne) that this is a moment charged with heady romance. But it bears a warning too, from the mythological Daphne being chased by Apollo to her frightening transformation. You can draw your own conclusions about the hornbeam…

This is the introduction of the sensuous theme – the interplay of all five senses - and the garden, with all its Edenic associations, enclosed here around a puzzle.

Finally, in the plant daphne is the seed to the sub-conscious that leads Eve to read Daphne du Maurier. When she discovers that Dom’s ex-wife is called Rachel (another of du Maurier’s mysterious titular characters, from My Cousin Rachel), Eve is drawn to re-read Rebecca, and in her over-imaginative isolation, she will impose that story on her own situation.

My intention was show Eve intensifying her own experience in Provence, so deeply sensitive to every detail that the dazzling world she narrates is partly her unspoken escape from reality – into a hyper-reality formed of books and stories. This rose-tinted world masks her fears about the relationship, begun with such dreamy optimism in what seemed like paradise in the South of France.

For an author, there is nothing better than a reader/ reviewer who really understands what you have tried to achieve. I know there are plenty of others who feel that the descriptions in this book are overdone; it’s a matter of personal taste, after all, and also how quickly you want to skim along the surface of a book. The Lantern is currently on a TLC Book Tour (link here) and among some lovely and receptive blog reviews is one from Courtney at Stiletto Storytime, who made my heart sing when she wrote:

The Lantern is really a feast for the senses bringing both the past and the present to life through thoughtful descriptions (…) in such lush detail from the smell of a flower to the slant of the sun and yet you never feel overwhelmed by her details just included, (…) layering events, people and every day nuances just so throughout her writing. To read this book is to really be taken away from the average and thrust into another world. A world of sights, smells and mystery…

Thank you, Courtney – a posy of Daphne Odora for you! The whole review is here. And if anyone is interested in how I see the novel, including the reasons for the entanglement with Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, then click here.

 

 

Labyrinth of the Five Senses, Yvoire

Click on the link here for the garden website: Gardens at Yvoire

The art of entanglement

City Lupins by Lynne Ciacco



In this intriguing picture by artist Lynne Ciacco, a tangle of lupin flowers and branches obscures the house behind. Nature is taking over, perhaps even barring the way. The muted colours give a melancholy atmosphere, and the green in the foreground ceases to denote leaves, and hints at creeping damp on the outside walls.

Shadows beneath the tracery are not immediately apparent, but they are there, and once noticed, they seem to grow. Even the blue sky is overrun, as the house bleeds into it, blocking out the light. It makes for a rather eerie and intense disorder – or is that just how I choose to read it?

It reminds me very much of the scene that greeted us when we first arrived at our property here. It was July and a relentless sun had supercharged weeds and wildflowers in the courtyard. The grass on the terraces was thigh-high. In the five months since we had first seen it in winter (below), the place seemed to have changed and slumped further into decay, its bare bones reclaimed by a surging wildness.

Inside, the smell of mouse was overpowering. Drifts of dry leaves had found the corners of every room. Dead insects crunched under our feet. Scorpions scuttled up walls. We camped on stone floors, took note of the many large structural cracks in the buildings, and hoped for the best.

That first daunting summer, in between restoring order outside, sweeping and scrubbing, and meeting builders, I re-read Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, and wondered…what if I had come here knowing less about the countryside I was in and the man I was with? Who had lived here before us, and did anything of them remain? That’s when I started writing…

Lynne Ciacco lives and works in Atlantic Canada. She has a fine art degree (BFA) from the Emily Carr Institute in Vancouver and works in diverse media, from acrylics to pastel and watercolours, as well as textiles. City Lupins is an example of her digital art using textured layers and blending modes. You can find her website here and her art blog here.