What we thought:
At the height of the 1980s, a middle-aged English couple,
fleeing tragedy back home, make a new life in an hunting lodge in the Dordogne
– a landscape on which humans have left traces since Neolithic times. But the
grief that Annette and Gerald should share is driving a wedge between them
instead.
The Chase explore the way grief and guilt affects people differently.
Because we weave between the points of view of Gerald and Annette, it is almost
impossible to avoid feeling some sympathy for both of them, even when they seem
hell-bent on misunderstanding each other.
Fergusson deftly evokes the atmosphere of the late
1980s. Her Dordogne is inhabited
with an array British ex-pats mixing uneasily with their French neighbours, both aristocratic
and peasant. The misunderstandings
between the couple are mirrored and magnified by the misunderstanding within
the little community.
Interspersed through the story are vignettes from the
history of this ancient land: a stone age cave painter, a knight from the
Hundred Years War, an aristocrat on the cusp of the Revolution, a German
soldier corrupted by the power of Occupation. In each vignette, Fergusson’s
language changes, subtly reflecting the period she evokes.
The blurb for the Chase describes the book as ‘Joanne Harris
meets Daphne du Maurier’, but the books this most evoked for me are The Line of
Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst (for its evocation of the English in France in the
1980s) and Unless by Carol Shields
(for its exploration of the nature of grief).
You’ll Enjoy This If You Like: Carol Shields, Patrick Gale, Alan Hollinghurst
Avoid If You Don’t Like: Gently paced stories focused on
internal journeys rather than external action; stories of well-heeled English
ex-pats in France
Ideal Accompaniment: Confit of duck, chateaubriand au trois
poivres, a glass of Pomerol
Genre: Literary Fiction
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