Review

Skylark is a dual narrative novel which starts in 2019 with the discovery of an unusual blue coloured glass and the carving of a skylark in the walls of Notre Dame Cathedral during its recent refurbishment. The story then goes back to 1664 where we meet Alouette Voland, the daughter of a master dyer, whose name is French for skylark. Alouette’s father works for the Gobelins who are an influential family in Paris but he is also answerable to the powerful guilds who have strict rules. Having grown up watching her father create his colours, Alouette has ambitions of her own and sets about creating a blue colour from her plants which is made vivid with a dash of arsenic. However, Alouette is playing with fire in more ways than once as even small measures of arsenic are dangerous to her health and the guilds strictly forbid women from creating dyes.

Astounded by his daughter’s success, Rene decides to use the arsenic to help him create the perfect shade of red that he has been striving for all his life but the guilds start to get suspicious that he is betraying their secrets to foreign dyers and arrest him. Desperate to intervene on his behalf, Alouette soon find herself in trouble and is sentenced to three years at the Salpêtrière asylum for being too outspoken. The asylum is a miserable place where the women are mistreated and Alouette has to endure regular bloodlettings to get rid of her ill humours. However, there are far more sinister things going on in the asylum and Alouette is determined to expose them to the world.

In 1939, Kristof Larson, a psychiatric student, is starting his residency in Paris where he hopes to make a difference in the lives of his patients but he is appalled by the new electro-therapy methods being used by the other doctors. However, Kristof doesn’t have time to dwell on it for too long as the Germans are marching towards Paris and when the city falls things get dangerous for everyone, When he learns some of the worst patients are being selected for euthanasia, Kristof is faced with the dilemma of turning a blind eye or do something that may cost him his life.

Kristof has also come close to a Polish Jewish family who live in the same apartment building on the Rue de Gobelins and he watches with growing dismay as their lives become increasingly restricted by the Nazis. However, when the Brodsky family are rounded up, Kristof finds himself as a surrogate father too their fifteen year old daughter, Sasha, who is unexpectedly released along with some of her friends. Realising the teenagers are not safe, Kristof leads them through the tunnels of Paris on a dangerous mission to safety. Sasha Brodsky shares narrative duties with Kristof in the war chapters and we learn what it is like to grown up with constant fear of persecution.

Skylark is a complex novel and it is sometimes hard to see how the two storylines are connected, although there is the interest in the tunnels in both timelines, as well as the treatment of psychiatric patients. All of the characters are interesting in their own way but I found it irritating when the storyline built up to a dramatic point in one timeline, only to be dragged to the other timeline. I guess it builds suspense but it was frustrating more than anything else. The underground tunnels didn’t play as important a part as I was expecting and feature more in the war story more than it the past where we meet quarryman Etienne who becomes important to Alouette. While we get a resolution to Alouette’s story, the same can’t be said for Kristof or Sasha whose story just stops. It would have been nice to know if Sasha ever found her family after the war.