The Portrait by Antoine Laurain

This mischievous first novel from award-winning French novelist Antoine Laurain is not as accomplished as his other work. The Red Notebook is the one you want to read. For me, missed opportunities made it feel incomplete, taking me out of the story. Laurain worked as an antiques dealer when he wrote this, and beautiful objects permeate this story.

A man who loves objects narrates this from a bunker in the heart of Burgundy filled with his collection. Snuff boxes, carved-ivory, paperweights, gilded keys. A cabinet of curiosities jealously guarded for their one true master.

In Paris, lawyer Pierre Chaumont could not keep away from the auction houses, his collection overtaking the home to the annoyance of his wife. He could not resist an eighteenth-century pastel potrait of a man in a powdered wig and paid ten times his budget to buy it. He had to own it; the man looked exactly like him! But, no one he knew could see it. Provenance research brings him to the Burgundy countryside where he is surprisingly welcomed with open arms by the stunned villagers. Where have you been? The missing Comte de Mandragore has returned from Paris. At the Mandragore estate, Pierre makes up an amnesia story the Comtesse de Mandragore accepts. She has remained faithful to her husband, now all is as it should be. Except the halls are missing a painting.

Playing with identity, this is fanciful, but I felt it could have been more rounded. There is his childhood friendship with a gay Uncle 'Aunt Edgar' who wears makeup and a cape, and the passion of collecting (it's a collection when you have two and are looking for a third). All of the relationships could be fleshed out - as he realizes he was actually blind to what he left behind, and what he has gained, he actually knows little about. Delightful, but not fulfilling.

2007 (translated 2017) / Tradeback / 144 pages

My other reviews for Antoine Laurain:

The Red Notebook