The Witch of Painted Sorrows by M.J. Rose; Atria Books © 2015; 978-1-4767-7806-8, 366 pages, $25.
By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO—Sandrine grew up in the lap of American luxury. Her American mother and French-born father owned several East Coast homes. Her father frequently took her to museums, concerts, and art exhibits. However by the time this novel’s story begins, her mother was already dead, and within a relatively few pages her beloved father commits suicide after accusing her loathsome husband of ruining their banking business.
Sandrine decides to escape her husband by traveling incognito to Paris to live with her paternal grandmother, who continues in the tradition of the women of her family, scandalous in America, well accepted in turn of the century (19th to 20th) France. Grandma is a still-quite-attractive courtesan, who throws lavish parties, brings together interesting people in her centuries-old mansion, and sleeps with her favored patrons, who often ply her with gifts.
From a naïve, sexually unfulfilled woman, Sandrine gradually becomes sexually fulfilled, and later even sexually aggressive, but it is not her grandmother who leads her down this path. In fact, grandma does everything she can to restore Sandrine to her former nice-Jewish-girl, uncomplicated self. She fears that Sandrine has been possessed by a witch whom she believes has long haunted the house. This witch’s lust is said to be so strong, she has felt compelled to occupy the bodies of generations of women in the family in order to find men with whom to satisfy herself. The grandmother becomes even more convinced of the power that the witch has over Sandrine when she sees the abandon with which Sandrine suddenly paints, and the sexual explicitness of her paintings.
Sandrine, enjoying the woman and artist that she is becoming, pooh-poohs her grandmother’s concerns, and resists with all her power (and perhaps with some of the witch’s?) when her grandmother drags her to a mikvah where a cousin who is a rabbi tries unsuccessfully and disastrously to conduct a Jewish exorcism ceremony.
As passionately as Sandrine needs to consort with Julian, an architect who is renovating her grandmother’s mansion, so too does she feel compelled to express herself more and more boldly as an artist.
In depicting Paris of the Gay 90’s, author Rose excels in her description of avante-garde, themed nightclubs, the woods, the Eiffel Tower, and other areas of Paris.
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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. Comments may be place by readers in the box provided below this article or sent directly to the author via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com