Acquired Book By:
I was selected to be a tour stop on the “Rodin’s Lover” virtual book tour through France Book Tours. I received a complimentary copy of the book direct from the publisher Plume, in exchange for an honest review. I did not receive compensation for my opinions or thoughts shared herein.
Inspired to Read:
I barely had time to read the full premise of Rodin’s Lover when I signed up for the blog tour, as I had a sixth sense about this particular release! I had a strong feeling that after the success of Webb’s debut novel on behalf of Josephine Bonaparte, this next one would draw quite a large readership — partially out of curiosity and partially out of the fact all of us knew how intricate she layers the historical fact with the fiction; etching into our collective memories a full-bodied novel rooted in history, with characters who step off the page as if they were being given a second life to live in front of us!
I had heard an inkling about this being set in France and knew it had a strong impact on the world of art, but as far as what it was precisely about — that was something I was happily surprised to have found out much, much later! Rodin is one sculptural artist I do not know too much about overall, as I had mentioned on the interview I gave on this tour, most of the artists I am familiar with are Italian in origin! I had to smile when I realised this, as Webb’s art history appreciations lie in France, with mine further south in Italy! I never had thought about how different we (here refers to ‘everyone’ not merely Webb) approach what draws our eye into an artist, and what it is about that particular artist’s style and voice out of the medium and materials he/she uses that stabilises the connection for us. Even the country of origin can have a resounding effect on our peception and our acception of a particular era of art.
On my connection to Ms. Webb:
Ever since I first hosted her debut novel Becoming Josephine on her original blog tour in January 2014, I have happily had the pleasure of crossing paths with her in the twitterverse! We would share quite a lot of happy conversation rather spontaneously as the year carried forward. We have the tendency to duck inside the same Twitter events, chats, and/or follow or converse with writers in common whilst delighting in the bookish and writerly joy that extend out of our paths continuously crossing. I delight in the joy of being able to interact with writers I have had the honour of reading stories of inasmuch as the writers who become a delight to know in this virtual bookish community.
I am disclosing this, to assure you that I can formulate an honest opinion, even though I have interacted with her and have enjoyed our random conversations on Twitter. I treat each book as a ‘new experience’, whether I personally know the author OR whether I am reading a book by them for the first time.
Rodin's Lover
by Heather Webb
Source: Publisher via France Book Tours
Book Synopsis:
A mesmerizing tale of art and passion in Belle Époque France
As a woman, aspiring sculptor Camille Claudel has plenty of critics, especially her ultra-traditional mother. But when Auguste Rodin makes Camille his apprentice—and his muse—their passion inspires groundbreaking works. Yet, Camille’s success is overshadowed by her lover’s rising star, and her obsessions cross the line into madness.
Rodin’s Lover brings to life the volatile love affair between one of the era’s greatest artists and a woman entwined in a tragic dilemma she cannot escape.
Places to find the book:
Also by this author: Becoming Josephine, Author Interview: Heather Webb (Rodin's Lover), Cover Reveal: Fall of Poppies: Stories of Love and the Great War, Last Christmas in Paris, The Phantom's Apprentice
Published by Plume
on 27th January, 2015
Format: Paperback
Pages: 320
Published by: Plume (@PlumeBooks)
an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) (@penguinusa)
Available Formats: Paperback, Ebook
Converse via: #RodinsLover, #HeatherWebb, & #FranceBT
About Heather Webb
HEATHER WEBB is the author of historical novels Becoming Josephine and Rodin’s Lover, and the anthology Fall of Poppies, which have been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Cosmopolitan, Elle, France Magazine, and more, as well as received national starred reviews.
RODIN’S LOVER was a Goodreads Top Pick in 2015. Last Christmas in Paris, an epistolary love story set during WWI released October 3, 2017, and The Phantom’s Apprentice, a re-imagining of the Gothic classic Phantom of the Opera from Christine Daae’s point of view releases February 6, 2018. To date, her novels have sold in ten countries. Heather is also a professional freelance editor, foodie, and travel fiend.
Camille Claudel & Rodin:
Claudel is a self-sacrificing artist unto where she doesn’t see past her creativity and the ache she has to explore more with her mouldings of clay. She did not just give her light, heart, and soul to the art she fused every part of her being to the medium; lending an outside observation that without art, Claudel would no longer exist because art had replaced the words and experiences that manifest outside that scope.
You can see quite a bit about Rodin’s temperament whilst he is in conversation with Monet; both men were working in Paris whilst approaching their careers with equal passion yet with different trueness to their own individualistic character. Where Monet was melancholic due to tragic loss, Rodin is seen a bit too esteemed to defy the rules by which both men worked in order to make their livings. On Monet’s behalf, I believe he did not feel his course was set to break the rules but rather to fuse his own artistic joy into a visual element that would appeal to the public. Rodin on the other hand was a bourne rebel who did not want to be placed inside a pre-determined path nor adhere to a rule of how to sculpt when he himself would sort that out in his studio.
My Review of Rodin’s Lover:
Camille comes into view quite strong as she has an internal strength of resolve that doesn’t become defeated when in direct deflective glare of a disapproving mother’s ire! No, Camille asserts her gift for sculpture and art, as if the world should realise her soul is attached to clay and that it is out of clay that she can carve out her own spirit; to give all of herself to her art, and thereby present back to the world a piece of what she can form out of raw materials. She’s chastised by her mother for not bending to the rule of the hour, the idles of most girls of her time were not spent in keeping with a refined sense of aptitude for fine art but rather an inclination towards a bid for marriage. I could no more see her dancing at a ball than turning heel on her passion for seeking out a way to breathe fire into her bones through the clay that touches her hands.
Whilst Camille was following the movements of her heart through her art, the outside world had not yet become acquainted with her, as at the age of seventeen she was undiscovered, untrained, and cringing for the hours lost being left at home with a family who did not understand her innermost desires. Camille thrived when she was sculpturing, as it gave her mind a bit of a challenge to rudiment out the lines of a person’s portrait as much as capture the image she were seeking to etch out of the clay which was quite tricky to mould to your will!
You become caught up in her internal world, as she lies in wait — a murmuring of confliction on her brow as she is unsure what her father will decide — an opportunity arose for training in Paris, but being the year she’s living, to travel unaccompanied and alone is clearly out of the question! Yet! Oh, you can feel her vexations intermixing with her spirit soaring over the plausibility of how her life would change if she could study at a proper school and alight inside a circle of artists who would accept her most readily!
When Camille receives the gift she never felt her parents would give her (a relocation to Paris, entrance into an art school, and the chance to study in a co-ed environment) it came with a few strings attached that did not swallow well into her soul; her mother was quite fierce and determined to see her wed. Camille’s mother could not see past the conventionalities of the time, to admit that her daughter was a forward-thinking and radically independent female was a bit too much for her to consider plausible. In her mind, any woman of marriageable age ought only to think of suitors and household duties.
As Auguste Rodin enters into the story, we gather a full fury of his artistic genius stemming out from a wild flickering flame of creative fire assaulting his mind and his composure. Rodin is a passionate man who is as consumed by his art as Camille; they both tirelessly twiddle on their choices of etching out the mould and figures of their sculptures; presuming that the pieces are never quite finished nor a full manifestation of what they wanted it to be. Artists are astute in their intentions but they can become lost in the pursuit of their art.
Camille’s consumption of her soul through the clay and the disparateness of becoming lost within the art world itself, truly corroded away her ability to function. She was not the only woman who would have her work go unnoticed nor would her work become released under the cover of a man’s name; but her madness of flight within her spirit was brought-on by the adversity of constantly needing to re-approve who she was to everyone she felt intimately connected too. She had trouble finding confidence in her work when each time she attempted to find recognition (in small or large ways) she would endure another lesson in defeat. She was in constant turmoil — wrung out as an artist and a bit lost as to where she fit within the close confidences of those she trusted most. If only she could have sought out help to help calm the war within her spirit, she might achieved a freedom she dearly yearned to find yet of which remained elusive throughout her life.
Heather Webb has an intuitive manner of ebbing out a strong presence of women in literature:
The last time I felt this intrinsically entwined with a writer’s capacity for giving me such a vivid and strong presence of a living person of the historical past was not just within Webb’s debut novel, Becoming Josephine but within the pages of Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald! So much so, that I found myself struggling to formulate the words to properly convey how Rodin’s Lover was lending an impression on me, as I felt consumed by the narrative itself, and became quite attached to Camille! Her spirit lifted off the page and transcended time to be more of a living truth of her essence than a work of historical fiction. This was the exact same reaction I had whilst I had read about Zelda, as somehow both authors (Therese Fowler penned Z) tapped into that nexus of where writers and their subjects intersect through their pens!
The clarity of both Camille and Zelda is so strongly evoked that you nearly feel as if they were present to give a proper recounting of their lives! This novel reads closer to an autobiographical work of journalling a key section of Camille’s struggle for finding freedom out from under her family’s persistence to lead a normal life and her seeking to find a way to carve out her own mark in art by allowing her work to stand on technical merit.
I am in full gratitude for the writers who take up such a breadth of joy in their research that they have found a way to insert themselves body and soul into their subjects, to such a height of clarity as to give us a tangible connective thread to the past and to the people we might not have met unless their books were written for us to read.
This book review was courtesy of:
Earlier on the tour, I interviewed Ms. Webb!
I must say, the book cover is even more smashing live in person! I felt the style of the book cover matched the novel quite well, indeed! It has this atmospheric effect to it as though Camille Claudel is fading out of view and has become part of the cosmic collective. I had to share the tweet Ms. Webb had cast out at first glance:
Mockups came for RODIN’S LOVER! They’re foiled and shimmering gold and GORGEOUS. I’m in love. Thank u @PlumeBooks! pic.twitter.com/AQtrDvMifF
— Heather Webb (@msheatherwebb) August 28, 2014
Be sure to check out my Bookish Events for (2015)
to see what I am hosting next via:
{SOURCES: Cover art of “Rodin’s Lover”, book synopsis, author photograph of Heather Webb, author biography, the blog tour badge were all provided by France Book Tours and used with permission. Ruminations & Impressions Book Review Banner created by Jorie in Canva. Photo Credit: Unsplash Public Domain Photographer Sergey Zolkin. France Book Tours badge created by Jorie in Canva. Post dividers by Fun Stuff for Your Blog via Pure Imagination. Tweets embedded due to codes provided by Twitter.}
Copyright © Jorie Loves A Story, 2015.
Related Articles:
Please take note of the Related Articles as they were hand selected due to being of cross-reference importance in relation to this book review. This applies to each post on my blog where you see Related Articles underneath the post. Be sure to take a moment to acknowledge the further readings which are offered.
Camille Claudel – (en.wikipedia.org)
I’m a social reader | I tweet my reading life
I did & I already know I will! :) RT @WritingRen If you liked @msheatherwebb's BECOMING JOSEPHINE, you'll adore RODIN'S LOVER! #FranceBT
— Jorie Story 📖🎧 (@joriestory) April 23, 2014
My #bookreview of behalf of #RodinsLover by Heather Webb
Whilst getting to know Camille Claudel #Rodin #arthistory— Jorie Story 📖🎧 (@joriestory) January 28, 2015
Blog Book Tour | “Rodin’s Lover” by Heather Webb An introspective historical fiction set around Rodin & Camille… http://t.co/eY0CdtA59D
— Jorie Story 📖🎧 (@joriestory) January 28, 2015
@eclectictales My favourite was Heather Webb's Rodin's Lover; felt very true & real to era & so very vividly honest in voice #HistoricalFix
— Jorie Story 📖🎧 (@joriestory) April 1, 2015
#ThrowbackThursday | Revisiting #JLASblog comments
Such as the beautifully lovely ones I received by @Julie_Valerie!🤗I've been responding to her compliments on behalf of my #bookreviewing style & appreciative of re-finding the praises she's given me🙌💜https://t.co/T0e7berKRq
— Jorie Story 📖🎧 (@joriestory) February 7, 2020
Reading this book contributed to these challenges:
- 2015 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge
Another comprehensive blog post about a great book – Jorie, you’re amazing! I looking forward to reading Heather Webb’s book. It’s receiving great coverage and reviews right now – I know it must be an exciting time for Heather. Don’t you just LOVE being in the book world? So much excitement and a lifetime of neverending stories. It’s just perfect.
Thank you for linking this book coverage to the Hump Day Blog Hop. Always the last Wednesday of the month, always a good time.
Hallo, Hallo Ms Valarie,
You’ve truly blessed me with your beautiful commentary on my blogging style and the way in which I articulate my ruminative thoughts on the stories I am reviewing! I regret I wasn’t able to share my gratitude a bit sooner than now. I do, actually – I love the inertia of excitement about being actively involved in book world because of how passionate I am about stories and the authors who write them. In more recent years, I’ve started to get into Autobiographies, Memoirs and Biographies as well as topics in Science and other STEM areas of interest – to where I am also shifting towards re-balancing my readerly life between Fiction, Non-Fiction and Poetry (as I added Poetry within the first few years of being a book blogger) – I truly feel blessed for being a part of this part of the publishing world. It has offered a unique perspective and as a writer and poet myself, I know it will help me greatly in the future for what I have learnt as a blogger and socially engaged reader on Twitter. Both on my personal / blog feeds @joriestory and my outreach for Romance, Women’s Fiction and Feminist Lit via @SatBookChat.
Being able to follow Ms Webb’s career from her debut novel to her latest release and even her Independently published re-telling of Phantom of the Opera has truly been a special part of my memories and journey as a book blogger. Being able to link to blogs like yours along the route of this journey I’ve taken has been a pleasure of joy. I was grateful our paths had crossed and I noticed this week you are now releasing your own stories. Don’t be surprised if I might be in touch about those and I am thankful the years have been kind to you and kept you as a shining light to those of us who’ve had the chance to interact with you.