“France, dear captain, requires obedience before activity.”
Gabriel merely inclined his head. “Then France and I are presently negotiating.”
There are novels that take themselves terribly seriously, and then there are novels that can weave murder, political corruption, blackmail and conspiracy into a story in which a strategically deployed goose can prove every bit as effective as a loaded pistol. La Renarde Noire: The Black Fox, by Justan Autor, is most certainly the latter.
Éliane de Vauclair has lost almost everything. Her family has been destroyed, her name disgraced, and the truth of what happened buried beneath an official version of events designed to ensure that no inconvenient questions are asked. What remains is La Renarde Noire, the Black Fox, a masked figure determined to uncover the conspiracy that brought about her family's ruin.
What begins as a deeply personal search for answers gradually reveals something considerably larger. Éliane discovers a world in which debts, secrets and forged documents can be used to control people and hide the truth. I thought Autor handled this aspect of the novel particularly well. Ledgers, seals, letters, warrants and pamphlets may not sound like the most exciting weapons, but here they can destroy a family as effectively as any pistol.
Éliane is an engaging heroine whose development gives the novel much of its emotional weight. She begins her journey driven largely by what happened to her family, but the more she uncovers, the more she realises just how many other people are being harmed by the same conspiracy. Her search for justice broadens beyond herself as she encounters those whose poverty, debts and vulnerability have been exploited by the same people she is pursuing. Importantly, however, she never loses the anger and determination that make her such an entertaining character. Éliane may come to understand the difference between justice and revenge, but that certainly does not mean she has entirely abandoned the latter.
The supporting cast was one of my favourite aspects of the novel. Three Buttons, Mireille, Renaud and Baptiste bring very different talents and personalities to Éliane's cause, and what initially feels like a collection of unlikely allies gradually becomes something much warmer. Their growing loyalty to one another gives the story a lovely sense of found family. There are moments of genuine tenderness between them, although someone can usually be relied upon to say or do something ridiculous before proceedings become overly sentimental.
Captain Gabriel de Saint-Aubin also makes for an interesting counterpoint to Éliane. His position initially places him on the opposite side of the law, but the deeper he looks into the destruction of Vauclair, the harder it becomes for him to reconcile obedience with conscience. I enjoyed watching the relationship between Gabriel and Éliane develop alongside the conspiracy rather than taking over the story. Their attraction is complicated by questions of trust, duty and choice, and I particularly appreciated that understanding someone's reasons for an action is not treated as being the same as forgiving them.
Having read Autor's books before, I am familiar with his distinctive writing style. His prose is deliberately elaborate, playful and theatrical, with a narrator who is never afraid to step forward and offer an observation or two of his own. It is a style that asks the reader to pay attention, and there were occasions, particularly during some of the earlier action sequences, when I felt the ornate prose made events more complicated to follow than they needed to be. However, Autor's exuberant use of language is very much part of what makes his novels so recognisably his own, and it suits the increasingly farcical nature of this adventure particularly well.
And there is certainly plenty of farce. Disguises collapse, carefully laid plans go spectacularly wrong, respectable people lose every scrap of dignity, and several members of the animal kingdom demonstrate a remarkable talent for causing political mayhem. The humour becomes an integral part of the story rather than simply sitting alongside it, and I found myself becoming increasingly fond of the sheer unpredictability of the group's schemes.
Beneath all that comedy, however, lies a surprisingly serious exploration of who gets to decide what constitutes the truth. Again and again, Autor demonstrates how easily an official version of events can replace reality when the people creating that version possess enough authority. A lie written down, sealed and repeated by the right people can become more powerful than the truth, particularly when those who know otherwise are poor, frightened or considered too insignificant to matter. I thought this gave the novel considerably more substance than its wonderfully chaotic surface might initially suggest.
The story is ambitious, although I did feel that it occasionally tries to carry rather too much. There are numerous conspirators, intermediaries, coded objects and overlapping schemes to keep track of, and not every secondary thread receives quite the same satisfying resolution as the central mystery. There were moments when I would have welcomed a little more breathing room and a slightly tighter focus. Nevertheless, I found the principal storyline compelling, and the later chapters bring the novel's central ideas about identity, justice and truth together very effectively.
Perhaps what stayed with me most was Éliane's relationship with her two identities. La Renarde Noire begins as something she creates after Éliane de Vauclair has effectively been erased, but the distinction between the woman and the legend becomes increasingly complicated as the novel progresses. I thought the exploration of names, masks, reputation and the stories that others impose upon us was cleverly handled and gave Éliane's eventual acceptance of who she has become real emotional weight.
La Renarde Noire: The Black Fox is an ambitious, spirited and wonderfully eccentric historical adventure. Autor's elaborate prose demands the reader's attention, and the conspiracy occasionally becomes more complicated than necessary, but I found there was much to enjoy here. With memorable characters, an engaging heroine, plenty of intrigue and a wonderfully irreverent sense of humour, this is a novel that certainly knows how to entertain.
And if I have learnt anything from Éliane's adventures, it is this: never underestimate a determined fox — and never, under any circumstances, underestimate an irate goose.
The Coffee Pot Book Club
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