The Cleaner of Chartres
A Novel
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4.4 • 5 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
“If you enjoy the work of Marilynne Robinson, Penelope Fitzgerald, James Salter…you should be reading Vickers.” —Michael Dirda, The Washington Post Book World
There is something very special about Agnès Morel. A quiet presence in the small French town of Chartres, she can usually be found cleaning the famed medieval cathedral or doing odd jobs for the townspeople. No one knows where she came from or why. Not diffident Abbé Paul, nor lonely Professor Jones, nor even Alain Fleury, whose attention she catches with her tawny eyes. She has transformed all their lives in her own subtle way, yet no one suspects the dark secret Agnès is hiding.
Then an accidental encounter dredges up the specter of her past, and the nasty meddling of town gossips forces Agnès to confront her tragic history and the violent act that haunts it.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Drawn by its famous labyrinth, Agn s Morel has made a life in Chartres cleaning for the cathedral; its dean, Abb Paul; and a variety of townspeople, who are connected by gossip, much of it circulated by the malicious Madame Beck. Vickers tells Agn s's story in chapters that alternate between her current life and her earlier travails: raised by nuns after having been abandoned, she gets pregnant under mysterious circumstances, is forced to give up the baby, then has a breakdown. As in her bestselling Miss Garnet's Angel, Vickers leavens her realism with a subtle fairytale quality and a version of Christianity in which doctrine is less important than kindness or its absence, and in which the Devil exists, "but only in people's minds. That is his power." Things seem dark when Agn s's past collides with her present, but actually her luck may be changing. She learns to read, meets a sexy restorer, and, while ministering in simple but meaningful ways to some of her fellow townspeople, winds her way back to the center of her difficult life and out the other side. Though the darks and lights could be more nuanced, and the author's hand could be lighter, Vickers uses the Chartres Cathedral to ground a charming if not entirely surprising story.
