L'Anglaise

The books explores relationships, particularly between parents and their children and mental health. The characters are well-written and although the book jumps about a bit, I was gripped and very invested in the outcome. In the beginning Ella is dealing with the aftermath of her father's death and gradually we form a picture of her childhood and adult relationships which is both complex and affecting. But in her interactions with other characters she learns that her own difficulties with her parents are not unique. This is a sharp, clever and interesting book - highly recommended.

This is a fascinating read both as a story about the damage parents do to children and in terms of what is happening behind the text. You know it isn’t going to be easy when the first section is called Margaret and seems to be all about someone called Ella! As it unfolds, Margaret turns out to be Ella’s mother, unable to connect properly with her daughter and irrevocably damaged by her marriage to the homosexual Hugo who, as well as maintaining separate rooms within the household, eventually brings his lover Nick to join the party. These relationships are founded on several deceits underpinned by a complex mesh of silence and self-denials. It is clearly no place to raise a child and Ella is the damaged product.

Her instinct is to run away which she then does throughout the novel. Apart from fleeing to Europe and living that complex alienated life in another culture, she also runs away from opportunities in her work and personal life. Whenever she wakes up, she struggles to think about where she is. In social situations, she makes excuses – metaphorically and physically in constant flight.

She eventually meets Max through a chanced cat sitting task and then, as expected, panics, flees and tries to find reasons to reject him. Within a developing relationship with him, his father and his sister, Ella can be relied upon to introspect about what to say, read the situation wrongly and then say the wrong thing. Embarrassed by this she then leaves. It’s become a pattern.

Max seems to understand but it becomes clear that that is partly because of his own problems with his own mother, Olivia, who was – eventually – overcome by her own demons. In the second section of the novel, titled Olivia, Ella learns more about her as she attempts to write a novel focusing on Margaret’s calamitous wedding, honeymoon and beyond. Through this, and although she still cannot cope with situations and responds with panic, Ella is beginning the slow process of self-understanding which might lead to something better.

That doesn’t come, and even then it unfolds very slowly, until the third section of the book which is, at last, named after the narrator, Ella. There is some resolution here without giving too much away and we are left with two individuals, both damaged in various ways, but with some level of self-realisation and able to relate to one another. There is hope, at least.

It’s a good story, well told and stylishly described but also more complicated than that. The book which Ella is writing is the one in which she features and is called L’Anglaise although it clearly isn’t the same text. The elaborated description of a woman escaping to a foreign culture and unable to make the right choices constantly echoes Anita Brookner’s writing and sometimes raises the question of whether this is ‘un hommage‘ or a pastiche. That doesn’t detract from the fact that this is an excellent and engrossing read which draws you in, a social commentary on ghastly middle-class niceties and the impossibility of ever saying anything which is true, and a plot which offers resolution to Ella and, somewhere, the hope of redemption for us all.

Apart from being an easy and enjoyable reading, I found this book a fascinating study about bonds: severing the old, natural ones and forming new ones. The three couples we are introduced to - Margaret and Hugo (the cold manipuator and her gay husband), Olivia and Didier (l'anglaise drifter and her 'saviour'), and, finally, Ella and Max (the academic and the taciturn) - show us how communication fails, sometimes the metalanguage is as important as the words.The bonds between parents and children, as well as between siblings, are also complicated or void.
But what Ella tries to capture in her novel (within the novel, sometimes I felt I was studying literary theory again!) is the tragedy of uprooting oneself with the illusion that alienation could become familiar, just to end up in a place where normalcy is pressed on you. Unlike Olivia and Didier, Max seems not to expect much from Ella (or, at least, he does not utter it), their story might succeed. If not, the times have changed, a woman does not need to marry to ascertain her social status anymore. Poor women born in the wrong times, so on and so forth.. (to link life and academic studies again!)

Mundler is a beautiful writer and her words are a pleasure to read.

Ella is a likeable and relatable protagonist. Her struggles with her mother, who thinks she should marry and have children, are very realistic as are her relationships with men.

When Ella began to write her book, the novel lost pace for me. The long passages from her work in progress made the actual novel a chore to read and, in my opinion, didn't add to the enjoyment of the narrative.

This book is about identity and finding your own place in the world. It is academic and literarily indulgent in parts but we'll written and entertaining.

This was the first book I read from this author and I really enjoyed it.

Ella and Max have a beautiful and intricated relationship, that kept me glued to the book right till the end, wanting to know what would become of them.

It is not written in an easy and immediate way, and it actually forces you to think while reading which is exactly what I like to do, so it was a great read that I can only recommend.

An emotional story,full of longing, disappointments,and the search for identity.
Ella had a complicated childhood,her parents, Margaret and Hugo,were distant with each other and their daughter. Margaret only discovered that Hugo was gay,when he booked separate rooms for them on their honeymoon. The house was divided into two,and the master bedroom only had items in for show,when visitors stayed over. Later on, Nick,the boyfriend moved in. As soon as possible,Ella moved away and went to France where she became an academic in a university.
When Ella met Max,and learnt about his mother,Olivia,the realities of motherhood, and how bad experiences impinge upon the present day,become evident. Both Ella and Max have been severely damaged by their respective mothers,Ella is regarded as unimportant because she is clever and therefore seen as being too clever to attract a man, Max's mother committed suicide due to post natal depression and he has a fear of commitment in case he loses someone he becomes close to. They both struggle for happiness with each other,Ella is a very prickly character,and Max is unwilling to vocalise what he is searching for. The book ends on an optimistic note that hints at togetherness.
A beautifully written book,at times it feels like a lecture,but it is enthralling and hypnotic. Very well observed characters and although difficult at the beginning,it completely mesmerises. I enjoyed this book a great deal.
I have posted a copy of this review to Goodreads today.

Hotel du Lac was my first Anita Brookner novel. Her writing style and skill made her my favorite author, and she is, still, today. So to find a story where the main character is an academic, teaching in France, who specializes in Brookner's ladder of narratology, from her late novels, was a considerable surprise and delight.

Helen Mundler's story begins with Ella's return to England for her father's funeral. The book weaves in and out of the scars of Ella's childhood, the lack of nurturing love from parents who were so distant from each other that they lived on different floors of the house. Nick, the father's friend, takes care of the funeral arrangements so that mother and daughter can try to communicate, but as usual, it fails.

Ella returns quickly to her apartment in France. She doesn't make it through one night in her mother's house. When friends ask Ella about her academic work, and she corrects them that she has completed a Ph.D., not an M.A., her mother interjects that it isn't a husband and a baby. Fleeing would have been my choice as well.

Ella's parents, Margaret and Hugo, are each given a few chapters at the beginning of the book and then Ella begins to unravel her lifelong demons of being solitary, by choice, but not necessarily happily. We move into Brookner territory quickly. Helen Mundler does an excellent job of using every British woman in Ella's life as a protagonist in a novel she is trying to write. Each story has Brookner aspects to it, and HM creates lovely scenarios with endings you will have to find for yourself. Read this incredible new book.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced copy of this novel.

EXCERPT: ... (she) had supposed that Hugo's funeral would take place in a church, none in particular, but behind some blameless edifice of North London, perhaps even beautiful.

Margaret had served the funeral arrangements up as a fait accompli, had completed her message on Ella’s voice-mail with the phrase, 'It's at the Mount Vernon crematorium, if you want to come,' thus rendering her an intruder, an outsider at her own father's funeral, uncertain of her status, like an au pair on the scene of a family tragedy.

ABOUT THIS BOOK: At 35 years old, Ella is no longer excited by her academic career in France and has not found love. Following the unexpected death of her father, she is thrown into crisis, but then she meets the enigmatic Max. Over the course of a summer, their romance deepens—until she makes a discovery that throws everything off course. As Ella’s life becomes bound up with the stories of two other Englishwomen in France, she finds the freedom to tread an unconventional path and to love in her own way. This rich and complex work examines the effects on children of parents in fraught and painful relationships; the fragility of identity; and the ways love can heal.

MY THOUGHTS: L'Anglaise is a quietly brilliant book. Mundler's writing is awkward in some places, deliberate I think as it complements Ella's awkwardness with her own life. For although she is outwardly successful, she is not 'comfortable', not in her professional nor private lives, and certainly not with her family. If you have ever felt that you were the only person not issued with a rule book at the outset of life, then you will relate to Ella.

In other places, Mundler's writing is gentle, touching, surprisingly perceptive. Thesetwo writing styles, artistically combined, produce an engaging and absorbing read. There were several times, as I was reading, that I wondered if this might be a memoir, slightly auto-biographical. Still I wonder.

L'Anglaise is a read that must not be rushed. It was a read that often made me stop and think, to recall moments in my own life and to view them from a different angle.

😍😍😍😍😍

THE AUTHOR: Helen E. Mundler is an associate professor. She is the author of Homesickness, as well as two critical works, Intertextualité dans l’oeuvre d’A.S.Byatt and The Otherworlds of Liz Jensen: a Critical Reading. She lives in Paris.

DISCLOSURE: Thank you to Holland House via Netgalley for providing a digital ARC of L'Anglaise by Helen E. Mundler for review. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own personal opinions.

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