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Ignorance

3.09 of 5 stars 3.09 · rating details · 142 ratings · 45 reviews

A stunning war-time novel set in France from Booker-shortlisted author Michèle Roberts.

After every war there are stories that are locked away like bluebottles in drawers and kept silent. But sometimes the past can return: in the smell of carbolic soap, in whispers darting through a village after mass, in the colour of an undelivered letter.

Jeanne Nerin and Marie-Angèle Bau...more

Hardcover, 240 pages

Published May 10th 2012 by Bloomsbury (first published January 1st 2012)

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May 11, 2013 Jan is currently reading it

What attracted me was this review from the Grauniad:
There are at least two types of ignorance. The first reflects lack of teaching and experience, the second a more subtle, deliberate failure to know what ought to be known. Two young girls, Marie-Angèle Baudry and Jeanne Nérin, grow up in a convent school in the French provinces, in the decade before the second world war. Sexual ignorance – indeed, sexual blankness – is what their culture requires from them. They need to be educated, but not too...more What attracted me was this review from the Grauniad:
There are at least two types of ignorance. The first reflects lack of teaching and experience, the second a more subtle, deliberate failure to know what ought to be known. Two young girls, Marie-Angèle Baudry and Jeanne Nérin, grow up in a convent school in the French provinces, in the decade before the second world war. Sexual ignorance – indeed, sexual blankness – is what their culture requires from them. They need to be educated, but not too much. Girls should be spiritual, yet freedom of the spirit is no more desirable than freedom of the body. As always, every social wisdom contains its paradox.

Jeanne, the daughter of a Jewish washerwoman, has been taken in by the convent as a charity child. The ironically named Marie-Angèle has the makings of a bourgeois hypocrite of the purest type, and yet, like her friend, she is a child, powerless, swept by tides of feeling, devoured by curiosity and longing. At this stage there are remnants of childish freedom in Marie-Angèle, despite the religiosity and materialism that will distort her life as she grows to adulthood. Jeanne, however, already suspects how fragile and provisional her status is. There is no social model strong enough to protect outsiders once war comes.

Michèle Roberts is a magnificent writer of the body. Few novelists can match her sense of what it is to live in the flesh, chillblained in winter, sweating, desirous, enchanted by a drop of orange liqueur, disgusted but ravenous in the face of a bowl of greasy wartime cabbage soup, bewildered by the bulge of an erection under the curé's soutane. She describes with equal candour a child cracking the skin of icy puddles with a wooden-soled boot and a woman enduring sex with a black-marketeer for the sake of safety. There is rawness as well as art in her account of the humiliations and anarchies of childhood, or the physical grossness of adults to the senses of a child. Roberts is a poet and this is reflected in a prose which is concise and rhythmically paced.

Action and characters oscillate between the poles of two small towns, 10 kilometres apart: Ste-Marie-du-Ciel and Ste-Madeleine. Both places live up to their names and to the Catholic iconography with which they are suffused. The convent sits at the highest point of Ste-Marie, where it inculcates a species of virtue that tends to dwindle into convention. The brothel in Ste-Madeleine, where young Jeanne will go to work as a housemaid, is filled with workaday Magdalenes who long for their ugly lives to be made pretty. In fact they are receptacles: because these women are filled and dirtied, society can consider itself purged.

For all its sensuousness, this is a novel about brutalised lives, crushed hopes and a horror which is not so much drawn as outlined, a negative space that sucks in the worst terrors of childhood and makes them real. As a child, Jeanne is full of stories about lost children and monstrous, betraying parents, Bluebeard and Hansel and Gretel. In adulthood, she will see these stories reflected in nightmarish reality, as Jewish children are hunted down by gendarmes and dispatched to death-camps. The "not knowing" of the town's people is seasoned by their indifference.

The most compelling character in the novel is the black-marketeer, Maurice Blanchard. In him all the contradictions of the two towns are personified. He makes everything possible: food, fuel, connections. He divides his life and adjusts his conduct according to his audience. At one moment he appears to take huge risks to provide Jews with shelter and forged papers; at another he strips them of their life savings and builds up a dragon's hoard of gold. The ambiguous, magnetic Maurice controls the emotions of both Jeanne and Marie-Angèle, and through him Roberts explores compromised, betrayed and betraying France during the occupation. This tragic period of history has taken many decades to be absorbed into France's understanding of itself – if, indeed, a coming to terms is truly possible. Roberts, daughter of a French mother and an English father, is neither harsh nor lenient in her view of what happens in small towns when the population faces hunger, terror, coercion and bribery. No extraordinary acts force open the trap that holds her characters. For all the poetic richness of her writing, Roberts is a realist, and Ignorance is a novel of considered maturity.

• Helen Dunmore's The Greatcoat is published by Hammer.

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May 10, 2013 Johanne rated it 3 of 5 stars

This focuses on two girls from a French village around the time of WWII, they are reluctant friends for a brief while and then their paths diverge. Jeanne is the daughter of an impoverished cleaner and washerwoman, who is a convert from Judaism, but remains a Jew in the eyes of the villagers. Marie-Angèle is firmly of the bourgeoisie her father is a grocer, and her mother is that gossiping stereotype who congratulates herself on her generosity, but criticizes and gossips about the objects of her...more

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Feb 16, 2013 Gayle rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: can-t-put-down, women-s-fiction, history

IGNORANCE by Michele Roberts

SYNOPSIS: From Amazon

Jeanne and Marie-Angèle grow up, side by side yet apart, in the Catholic village of Ste Madeleine. Marie-Angèle is the daughter of the grocer, inflated with ideas of her rightful place in society; Jeanne’s mother washes clothes for a living and used to be a Jew. When war arrives, the village must play its part in a game for which no one knows the rules – not the dubious hero who embroils Marie-Angele in the black market, nor the artist living alon...more

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Dec 24, 2012 Maine Colonial rated it 4 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Note: Although I have not put true plot spoilers in this review, it is more detailed than some might prefer to read. For that reason, I have marked it as containing spoilers.

Two girls from a French village during World War II are reluctant friends when they briefly become the only two boarding students at the local convent. Jeanne Nérin's widowed mother, an impoverished cleaner and washerwoman, is a convert from Judaism, but she remains a Jew in the eyes of the villagers, and Jeanne is treated s...more

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Dec 23, 2012 Karyn rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: netgalley-arc

The setting of World War II was almost incidental to the story. The real focus was on the women and girls and their experiences - shaped by the war, but not a war story.

What I loved about this book was the way it showcased how much our perspective on life changes based on where we are in life. One woman's hero can be seen from another angle as a money grubbing jerk. We see the events of the war through Marie-Angèle's eyes first, so we know what the general shape of the war will be. But she is a...more

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Jan 29, 2013 Jo at Jaffareadstoo rated it 4 of 5 stars

Jeanne Nerin and Marie-Angèle Baudry grow up in the small French village of Ste Madeleine, where Marie-Angèle as the daughter of the local grocer thinks she is superior to her friend, Jeanne, whose mother, a Jewess, washes clothes for a living. However, the outbreak of WW2 will alter the dynamics, not just of the two girls, but also of the time in which they live.

This is not a story exclusively about war; it is rather more the story of the individual effects of war on a community and as both Jea...more

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Dec 07, 2012 Chaitra rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: war, world-war-ii, literary-fiction, netgalley, arc-reviews, historical-fiction, read-in-2012

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Jeanne Nerin and Marie-Angèle Boudry may have been thrown together when they were young, but it's an accident more than anything else. Jeanne Nerin is a converted into Catholic Jew, the daughter of a washerwoman who has seen better days. Marie-Angèle is the grocer's daughter, a Catholic, and a girl of relative privilege. Marie-Angèle's mother takes it upon herself to "improve" the lot of her washerwoman, and sponsors Jeanne into the same convent Marie-Angèle is sent to. The two play together, da...more Jeanne Nerin and Marie-Angèle Boudry may have been thrown together when they were young, but it's an accident more than anything else. Jeanne Nerin is a converted into Catholic Jew, the daughter of a washerwoman who has seen better days. Marie-Angèle is the grocer's daughter, a Catholic, and a girl of relative privilege. Marie-Angèle's mother takes it upon herself to "improve" the lot of her washerwoman, and sponsors Jeanne into the same convent Marie-Angèle is sent to. The two play together, dare each other into doing forbidden things, such as visiting the reclusive Jew who lives in the house next door to the convent. Something bad happens, and there their connection ends. Marie-Angèle grows up into respectability, gets swept off her feet by the glamorous, rich and outwardly charming Maurice Blanchard. It helps too that there's a war on and Blanchard is making the most of it by running a taxi service for fleeing Jews. Jeanne, on the other hand, gets employed by the "tart" house, is seen consorting with the Germans, and when the war is done, gets paraded in front of the whole town as a traitor to France. But, every story has at least one other side, and this book contrives to show all perspectives of common incidents.

I cannot make up my mind about this book. On the one hand, the main characters - Marie-Angèle, Jeanne, Maurice and the reclusive Jew Jacquotet are very well drawn. The prose is lyrical, even when describing mostly squalid goings on. And, no mistake, the glories of war do not reach this little shockingly anti-Semitic town, only the squalor and the greed and the profiteering. Roberts both contrasts and does not contrast Jeanne's life within two opposite surroundings - the convent and the whorehouse - she has equally traumatic episodes in both. She examines the hypocrisy and the judgmental nature of the town - everyone is doing their best to get through the war, and in some way are complicit with what was going on during German occupation - but the ones punished for it are the ladies of the tart house, who were also doing the best the could to survive. The ending, (view spoiler)

On the other hand, the book rapidly shifts gears, timelines and perspectives, sometimes not giving enough time for the reader to assimilate what is written. The central character is Jeanne, but her perspective is interspersed with that of her nemesis Marie-Angèle, her daughter Andrèe and a nun in the convent, Sister Dolly. Marie-Angèle is the best of the other perspectives, and it makes sense in the context of the contrast. Jeanne's daughter Andrèe on the other hand is introduced as the second Jeanne - a product of Marie Angèle's hypocritical charity - and just as she gets interesting we leave her in the middle of nowhere with someone we haven't been introduced to before, and we never see her again in the book. The inclusion of Sister Dolly just makes no sense. I wish Roberts did not feel the need to clutter the book so, and had stuck to two protagonists, however unlikeable they may be. There's also a difference in the prose used for each of these characters, but not enough of it to actually sound realistic. If I had not known I was reading Andrée's account, I would have mistaken it for Jeanne. Similarly Marie-Angèle and Sister Dolly. I also wanted to know more about a few other characters. Maurice, painted as a blackguard, is dropped off rather unexpectedly midway through the book.

In sum, I liked the book, but not as much as I wanted to or would have expected to when I picked it up. The beautiful language in Jeanne's accounts make up for the vagueness, but only just. 3 stars.

I received a copy of this book via NetGalley(less)

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Mar 27, 2013 Susan rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

The book is well written, the prose beautiful in demonstrating the characters' strident ignorance during their efforts to survive the war and assessing goals or achievements, their own or those of others. Yet key sections - Dolly, in particular and the potential parallels between the two protagonists, Jeanne and Marie Angele, and the two nuns, Dolly and Mother Lucie - were too opaque. Several characters could have been more developed. Despite the convent setting, religion's potential for ensurin...more

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Apr 22, 2013 Emily rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book was selected for the long list for the Orange Prize. It illustrated a very interesting cross section of lives affected by WW2, namely two women who start out as friends. Taking place in a small French village during the time of Nazi occupation, the book follows a few different narrators and spans from right before the Nazi takeover to a good 10 years after. I enjoyed the setting of the cozy little French village and the felt that the descriptions and tough characters really embodied an...more

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Apr 20, 2013 Lisa rated it 2 of 5 stars

I don’t mind, as a reader, rising to meet the challenge of an author, but there needs to be a payoff, and that’s what’s missing from “Ignorance.”

The book centers on Jeanne and Marie-Angele, who are classmates at Catholic school but not really friends and certainly not peers. Jeanne’s mother does laundry and mending for Marie-Angele’s mother, who runs a grocery with her husband. The disparity between their family situations -- as Jeanne puts it, “she had too much of everything and I didn’t have e...more I don’t mind, as a reader, rising to meet the challenge of an author, but there needs to be a payoff, and that’s what’s missing from “Ignorance.”

The book centers on Jeanne and Marie-Angele, who are classmates at Catholic school but not really friends and certainly not peers. Jeanne’s mother does laundry and mending for Marie-Angele’s mother, who runs a grocery with her husband. The disparity between their family situations -- as Jeanne puts it, “she had too much of everything and I didn’t have enough” -- prevents the girls from getting to be close and influences their choices as they grow from schoolgirls into women.

Jeanne’s mother was born Jewish, but changed her surname from Nerinsky to Nerin and poses as Catholic. Roberts gives us this information somewhat matter-of-factly but never explores Madame Nerin’s character. Not that every novel set during World War II has to focus on the treatment of Jews -- and “Ignorance” certainly doesn’t ignore what’s going on, as one character covertly helps people escape and others are turned out of their homes and businesses -- but this seems to be an interesting angle that is brought up and then just dropped.

It would be great to be able to give more of a summary of what the book is about, but there’s not a lot of plot. The book jumps around, back and forth in time and among multiple narrators. We get Jeanne’s point of view first and most often; we also hear from Marie-Angele, Sister Dolly from the school, and Jeanne’s illegitimate daughter. Instead of this giving a fuller picture of events, though, it results in a choppy storyline with large chunks missing, and the ending feels disjointed and too pat.

Roberts’s writing creates vivid images: words “hopped across the pages like toads,” the scent of early spring is “a bitter green perfume sharp as a chisel,” a locked front door “a slap in the face, a slap to the heart.” But ultimately, this novel doesn’t hold together: it’s like flipping through a stack of old pictures -- some beautiful, some horrifying, some simply descriptive -- that are cryptically labeled and out of order. (less)

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Jan 18, 2013 Lucy rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-2013

The synopsis on amazon is rather different to the one which I read on netgalley, and I feel it represents the book much better. I went into the story expecting a story which looked back on war times, and something which had been hidden within that time, some great secret. What I got was the story of two women, childhood friends who had started on a similar path but ended up going in completely different directions.

The war was somewhat of an important factor in the story, however it was only sign...more

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Aug 19, 2012 Annemarie Neary rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is a tale of the abuses and skewed morality of a community in occupied France for which war brings both winners and losers. Central is the chameleon-like Maurice, the sleek black marketeer who provides Marie-Angele with wealth and bourgeois respectability, but who is also capable of extreme sexual violence against Jeanne. At one point he seems to be about to turn into a kind of Schindler-figure, but later he is seen to be fleecing his desperate Jewish clients of their life savings in return...more

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Nov 27, 2012 Imogen rated it 2 of 5 stars

This book was really hard for me to follow, especially since there are no quotation marks when anyone speaks. At first I thought it was interesting, but then it just became annoying, and eventually I realized I was reading over what characters were saying as though it was part of the narration.

I can't say that the book wasn't well-written because it was, but when the book isn't put together well, it doesn't matter how beautiful your language is or how great your ending is (the ending was the on...more

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Aug 07, 2012 Shari rated it 3 of 5 stars

Jeanne Nerin and Marie-Angele Baudry grow up together in the small French village of St Madeleine. Marie-Angele – the grocer’s daughter grows up with a sense of entitlement and Jeanne – whose mother is cleaning lady (and a former Jew) learns to grasp at every chance throws at her. When WWII breaks out – both girls do what they believe is necessary to survive. The book is quite beautifully written but at times I found it vague and difficult to follow.

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Jul 22, 2012 Dulwichbooks rated it 4 of 5 stars

A beautiful descriptive novel of life in wartime France and how people cope with adversity and no one should judge the actions that are taken to survive. Roberts pulls you into the life of each character only to move you into another’s world just when you are making up your mind about them.
As the story develops you find it hard to actually like any of the characters, in particular Marie-Angele as the story weaves between her, Jeanne and Andree.

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Jan 27, 2013 Susan rated it 1 of 5 stars

Interesting material in principle. But the characters felt so distant and detached to me. It struck me as though it were a book in translation by a translator who didn't have any sensibility suited to the original. Very European, in sort of a poetical, pretentious, nonchalant sort of way. Too bad. I was hoping to have discovered a new author I'd like.

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Jun 07, 2013 Aisling rated it 3 of 5 stars

A story of two French village girls whose lives intertwine in the face of German occupation and WW11. One the daughter of merchants and the other the daughter of a Jewish widow who has converted to Catholism to ensure their safety. The subtle cruelties of wealth and the indignities of poverty are very well aired but I found the ambiguous ending somewhat frustrating.

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Jan 01, 2013 Naomi rated it 1 of 5 stars

I kept my review very limited and found I simply didn't like this book. I had difficulties finishing this story as it simply did not flow nor make a whole lot of sense to me. I found myself constantly distracted while trying to read this relatively short novel. As a result, it probably took me 5 times longer to read the book.

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Jan 30, 2013 Simon Thirsk rated it 3 of 5 stars

Although this was a good read, it somehow failed to capture my interest and suck me in as I had hoped it would, probably because the subject matter and the setting were just not exciting enough for me.
Nevertheless, a well-written novel from a highly repected writer, just not enough to my taste to make four stars.

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Feb 19, 2013 Stephanie rated it 3 of 5 stars

I really liked this book but it was very sad. I found myself rooting for Jeanne and her daughter but no resolution was ever found for them. It seemed most of the characters were just misunderstood in their intentions and a little communication could have saved them a lot of trouble.

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Feb 03, 2013 Susan Zinner rated it 4 of 5 stars

Really well-done book about what war does to individuals, communities and entire countries. I enjoyed the story of how these two girls dealt with the trials imposed upon France during the Occupation. I'll be reading more books by this author in the future...

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Feb 25, 2013 Michelle Willis rated it 3 of 5 stars

This was a decent book but I wish I felt more connected to the characters. I felt at least one storyline was left very unfinished. Honestly, it was one of those books where I kept waiting for something to happen but it never really did.

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Feb 21, 2013 Amy rated it 3 of 5 stars

With little joy, pleasure or glimmers of hope this story is the gray unhappiness that is experienced when two young women thrown together by circumstances who age as history unfolds during WWII.

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Apr 09, 2013 Janet rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2013

Historical fiction--France WW2--two young women, one French Catholic, one non-practicing Jew, friends, the paths they take. At times quite compelling, at other times skimable.

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Feb 11, 2013 Catherine Kerr-dineen rated it 3 of 5 stars

Having enjoyed Michele Roberts' other books, I expected to enjoy this more but was slightly disappointed. It as ambitious and detailed but somehow that all seemed a bit much.

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Jun 06, 2013 Sue Powell rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is a book you need to concentrate on to follow the story properly, because it moves between time and people.
The writing is exquisite. I love the way she uses language, and the subject matter is one that remains relevant. Very, very good.

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Mar 29, 2013 Ellen rated it 3 of 5 stars

The book is beautifully written. I was frustrated with the character development. The ignorance of the characters who were intelligent made me want to shake them.

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Apr 15, 2013 Rana rated it 2 of 5 stars

Lovely writing but wasted on such a flimsy story. If this was written as just a straight story without the fancy-pants this-is-prose-not-writing, it would have been an amazing book. But since the writing really does overwhelm the story and characters, it's not so amazing.

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Feb 12, 2013 Liz Ahlers rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Complicated novel about lives during World War II and the assumptions we make about people.

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May 16, 2013 Patricia rated it 3 of 5 stars

I LOVED the first 1/3 of this book -- I thought the fairytale overtones really enriched the story. By the end I didn't care much. It just didn't hang together as a novel for me.

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About Michèle Roberts

Michèle Brigitte Roberts is the author of twelve highly acclaimed novels, including The Looking Glass and Daughters of the House which won the W.H. Smith Literary Award and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Her memoir Paper Houses was BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week in June 2007. She has also published poetry and short stories, most recently collected in Mud- stories of sex and love (2010). Hal...more

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