THE MARRIAGE OF OPPOSITES

Alice Hoffman is a tremendously popular writer of historical fiction.  I first read her book The Dovekeepers and enjoyed it - so I opened this one expecting more of the same.  The Marriage of Opposites is the story of Rachel Pomie Petit Pissaro - a young Jewish woman from the island of St. Thomas.  As a young teenaged girl, in order to save the family business, she is bartered away into marriage with a much older widower who has three children of his own.  She comes to respect her husband and love his children.  When he passes away suddenly, Rachel falls in love with his nephew who comes from Paris to take over the running of the business.  Although their love is considered scandalous (she being his aunt by marriage) they marry and have several children - one of whom is Camille Pissaro, considered to be the Father of Impressionism and one of France's greatest artists.  I wish I had known this in the beginning of the book.  I just didn't put 2 and 2 together.

Rachel Pissaro's story is an interesting one.  It is told from a number of different perspectives - her own, her husband's, her dearest friend's and her son's.  Unfortunately, the two books I read just before this one were extraordinarily well written and, as a result, this one suffers a bit for me in comparison.  Hoffman's sentences are very wordy (she loves the comma) and sometimes I had to reread a paragraph to be sure who I was reading about.

While I enjoyed this book well enough, it probably won't find a permanent place on my bookshelf.