Trespass reviewed by Renée Levine

Trespass by Rose Tremain

I am a fan of the author’s ever since I read The Road Home a couple of years ago so that the theme of this book did not surprise me. Such subject matter as dislocation, a sense of belonging, looking for sanctuary, needing a home, all these reappear in this novel set in the Cevennes this time, a dark mountainous region in south western France, taking place in our time. It was in this same part of France that Robert Louis Stevenson travelled with donkey and gun to protect himself and tourists nowadays return in vast numbers still with donkeys, but no longer with guns.
The book is structured in alternating chapters each section dealing with a brother and sister, one french and one english, both sets victims of abuse, both sets seeking redemption.
The action takes place essentially in a small village in France in which Armon Lunel, a decrepit, dirty and alcoholic man 64 years old lives in his beautiful but equally decaying and decrepit stone house (called Mas Lunel the name of the local old stone houses) left to him by his father, which he has not been able to maintain and wishes now to sell to a foreigner for the money that it might bring him given that especially the Brits, are buying property in France to escape the financial crisis in their home country.
On the same grounds, but in a tiny cottage, lives his sister Audrun who has not inherited more than the patch of ground on which she built the cottage but which she, in contrast to her older brother, has maintained and loved because she loves the land and its beauty and treasures her sense of home and belonging to this ancient earth.
The second set of siblings are Anthony, an antique dealer from London who also at 64, has discovered that his riches are vanishing and his life has lost much of its meaning. In search of a sense of belonging when his feels utterly alone, he travels to that same village in the Cevennes to visit his sister Veronica who has emigrated earlier to France to find her happiness as a landscape gardener and author with her lover, Kitty, a second rate painter.
The connecting link between these two pairs of siblings, is real estate. Anthony is looking for a beautiful house which will be the happy setting for the last part of his life; Aramon wishes, desperately, to sell his house and find rest for himself with 450,000 euro which will not require any work or effort on his part but will bring him independence for the rest of his days.
Anthony Verey’s arrival brings chaos into the domestic life of the two women because the bond between brother and sister is stronger than the love which joins Kitty and Veronica. “why don’t lovers understand better the damage trespass can do?” Kitty asks. Every love, she claims, needs protected space and now her space has been usurped.
The other trespass occurs among the french siblings, the french ones this time. He owns the large house and she feels he has trespassed on her privacy over twenty years. Now he is looking for money to escape; she is looking for revenge. Her small cottage sits on disputed land.
The book evokes darkness: darkness of the woods, danger of curving roads for english drivers, crashing rocks and fierce currents of the streams, the magnificence of loneliness and the urgency of love.
Rose Tremain brings cultural collision to the surface, outsider against native, foreigner on foreign land, seekers of sanctuary versus a sense of belonging, victims of abuse are all around but above all perhaps is the theme of our times: outsiders who presume to think that one can be at home in a foreign country on land obtained with foreign currency simply because the foreigner has fallen on hard times in his own country but can still afford the misery available for cheap abroad where owners have fallen on hard times and buyers are by comparison, rich.
However, the author brings us to some sort of final redemption after opening up the ghastly damage done to the victims of this story.
People will argue wether this worked for them, the readers. Upon finishing the novel, I saw its perfect perfection of planned story, but the form so totally structured and never given a long leash, was too tight for me. I would have preferred a little more wiggle room for the reader, a little more space to invent or to imagine perhaps.
I’ll be curious to hear what people say besides what is totally true: this woman has written a beautifully crafted work.