Marguerite

January 15, 2020
Centering her first novel around a rural French village and the young Parisian who has come there as a traveling nurse, British author Kemp writes about the cost of suppressed passions--love, guilt, revenge--and the risk of secrecy. Twenty-four-year-old Marguerite Demers is caring for the elderly, gravely ill Jérôme Lanvier at his worn-down estate outside the village of Saint-Sulpice. Marguerite has taken the job to avoid Paris, her well-to-do parents, and guilty memories concerning her sister, Cassandre, four years younger than her, who came down with meningitis when Marguerite was 15. Marguerite's nursing career is a form of repentance for not having saved her sister. Secretive, obsessively self-blaming Marguerite relishes isolation, but she is sucked into incendiary undercurrents roiling within the village and inside Jérôme's family. Crises arise from crossed purposes, not simple misunderstandings; Kemp doesn't let her characters off the hook that easily: They make choices, often unwise, that affect not only themselves, but others. Their opposing needs, desires, and angers tighten like a noose around the characters' lives. Marguerite allows herself to become a pawn in the hostilities between her difficult patient and his adult sons. Jérôme is no stock literary curmudgeon with a soft heart. Always a bullying tyrant to his three resentful, still needy sons, Jérôme knows they hate him and hates them back. Meanwhile, Suki Lacourse, a local villager's Iranian wife, tries to befriend Marguerite as a fellow outsider. Suki harbors deep bitterness toward the local women who never accepted her, in particular Brigitte Brochon, whose husband, Henri, rejected Suki's sexual advances years before. Desperately in love with Henri, aware she is not his equal in looks or brains, Brigitte feels threatened by attractive, smart women like Suki and now Marguerite. But Henri, the one man in town who has won Jerome's respect, cannot escape his own secret and accompanying shame. When he and Marguerite come together, the repercussions are disastrous. Kemp writes with a careful restraint that makes the emotional explosions all the more powerful when they come.

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Starred review from January 27, 2020
In Kemp’s stellar debut, a young nurse gets caught up in romance, jealousy, and gossip on a farm in the South of France. Having trained to become a nurse in order to help treat her sister’s meningitis, Marguerite Demers takes a job caring for the prideful, cruel Jérôme Lanvier at his dilapidated Saint-Sulpice farmhouse. There, she befriends Suki, an Iranian who wears a hijab, causing the townspeople to call her a “witch doctor.” Both women provoke jealousy in Brigitte, who, along with her husband, Henri, works for Jérôme. Suki has long been picked on by gossipy and insecure Brigitte, who slanders her perceived rivals with abandon. Meanwhile, Henri, a handsome, sensitive farmer, is having an affair with Edgar, a writer, and is resigned to stay at the farm with Brigitte, where he tries to find contentment working in the dirt, enjoying “the day’s long accumulation of filth.” As Henri stands up for Marguerite, the pair’s connection heightens. Eventually rumors, combined with Suki, Brigitte, and Edgar’s jealousy, threaten Marguerite and Henri. Precise, distinctive prose (train doors close “with a hiss like a punctured tyre”) and well-drawn characters make this satisfying tale all the more memorable. Expect Kemp to make a big splash. Agent: Clare Alexander, Aitken Alexander Associates.

February 21, 2020

DEBUT Everyone in the small French village of Saint Sulpice wonders why Marguerite Demers, a young woman from a posh district in Paris, would take on the difficult and lonely job of nursing a cantankerous old man out in the provinces. Her dying patient, Jerome Lanvier, has already scared off a series of nurses. Quiet and reserved, Marguerite seldom sees anyone other than Jerome. It's as if she is doing penance for something, but what? Eventually, she gets to know some of her neighbors, including handsome farmer Henri, who has a big secret of his own. Then there's Suki, a flamboyant Iranian woman who has remained an outsider in the village and whose boredom causes her to stir up trouble. With the arrival of M. Lanvier's three sons, Marguerite gets caught in their family drama (they hate him and he hates them). The tension builds as events soon careen out of control. VERDICT In this somber and beautifully written debut novel, British writer Kemp skillfully draws readers in with her expert storytelling. She knows just when and how much to reveal about her intriguing characters' secrets and troubled lives.--Leslie Patterson, Rehoboth, MA

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2020
Marguerite's arrival in the village of Saint-Sulpice gets the locals talking: what would draw a young Parisian to the remote estate of Rossignol and its surly, aging patriarch? J�r�me, for his part, needs his new nurse for nearly everything, but wastes no time putting Marguerite through her paces, and, to the surprise, perhaps, of them both, she succeeds while remaining immune enough to his bouts of unkindness. Meanwhile, Brigitte, Rossignol's gardienne, stirs the rumor pot, while her farmer husband, Henri, deals with his own secrets, and outsider Suki befriends the intriguing stranger. While characters' actions, words, and, sometimes, their thoughts (especially Marguerite's), are strikingly clear, Kemp leaves the novel's background elements in a softer focus. But like the cicadas buzzing as spring turns to summer, there are big, loud stories hiding behind Marguerite and Jerome's day-to-day: dark episodes that inspired Marguerite's nursing career and caused J�r�me's alienation from his three adult sons. With its French provincial setting, and an unexpected romance hastening its second half, this is a moody, suspenseful, and altogether absorbing debut.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)