Exclusive interview with author Michelle Gable and a review of her novel about a girl seeking details on her past the merges with the missing Duchess of Marlborough
Rating: 3 Stars
By Gabrielle Pantera
“Artist Giovanni Boldini was a central character in A Paris Apartment, my debut novel,” says I’ll See You in Paris author Michelle Gable. “Back in the Gilded Age, you weren’t anyone unless he painted you, and so I studied his subjects. When I stumbled upon Gladys Deacon, I decided she was too delicious to leave to history. Among many other tales, Gladys disappeared from her palace in the 1930s and turned up in a dilapidated, Grey Gardens-style manse in Oxfordshire, England, forty years later.” A manse is the house of a Presbyterian minister.
Based on the real-life story of Gladys Spencer-Churchill, the Duchess of Marlborough, Gable’s second novel takes the reader from Virginia to a small town in England and then to Paris. It moves back and forth between 1973 and 2001. Family secrets are revealed and the characters experience emotional growth through mystery and romance rekindled. Past and modern day collide. A great novel about family. If you enjoy reading Kate Morton, you will enjoy this book.
Annie is recently out of college and newly engaged. She doesn’t know anything about her mother’s past or anything about her father either. Her mother Laurel is a recently retired lawyer. They’re traveling to England together where Laurel is trying to sell some property she inherited. Before leaving Virginia, Annie notices a book in her mother’s office and borrows it to read on the trip to England. In Oxfordshire, while staying at the Banbury Inn, Annie meets the Earl of Winton, a retired gentleman who tells her stories about the history of the area. As Annie reads the book she discovers it’s about Mrs. Spencer, who owned the Grange located not far from where they’re staying. Is Mrs. Spencer Gladys Spencer-Churchill, the Duchess of Marlborough? What about the house and the book is she related or connected to the missing Duchess?
“The first seed of I’ll See You in Paris was planted while researching my debut novel,” says Gable. “I knew the reader must meet Gladys. Besides the 1970s setting, the novel reflects on her glory days and also includes a modern-day storyline. Weaving three time periods together was a challenge. As described in my novel, the Grange had an outbuilding near the edge of its property. The building’s actual contents provided an unexpected callback to A Paris Apartment. With I’ll See You in Paris, the truth lined up with fiction in so many perfect and surprising ways.”
Gable says research is the best part of being a writer. “I love hunting for facts and stories and a sense of atmosphere through methods such as the internet, interviews, out-of-print books, personal collections in libraries, old magazines, and, of course, traveling. I’ll even watch television. Much of I’ll See You in Paris takes place in England in the 1970s. I saw every episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Fawlty Towers.”
Gable is currently writing her third novel, Book of Summer, to launch in May 2017. As with her first two novels, it features multiple time periods. It takes place on Nantucket and is based on the real-life erosion affecting the island, a home that’s been in a family for 99 years is in danger of tumbling over the bluff.
Gable lives a few blocks from the beach in Cardiff-by-the-Sea, California, near San Diego. “The wife of Cardiff’s founder was from Wales, hence the name,” says Gable. “Many of the streets in our neighborhood were derived from and inspired by counties or cities in England…Birmingham, Oxford, Cambridge, Warwick, Somerset, Norfolk, to name a few.”
Gable was born in La Jolla, California, and grew up in Del Mar. She went to school in Virginia and lived in Washington, D.C. for many years before returning to California.
I’ll See You in Paris by Michelle Gable.Hardcover: 400 pages Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books; 1st edition (February 9, 2016). Language: English ISBN: 9781250070630 $25.99
