The Secrets of Sainte Madeleine

​This is mainly the story of Elise, only daughter of Louis Salignac, who owns the enchanting Burgundy estate of Sainte Madeleine. It covers more than fifty years from the early 1920s through to the 1970s as Elise and members of her family face numerous challenges in juggling family upheavals while trying to keep the ancient vineyards operating successfully. Personal failings, disappointments and tragedies all play their part.

Apart from her great passion for Sainte Madeleine, Elsie is obsessed with her distant cousin, Laurent Senard, but their lives become so intertwined with others that the path of true love is definitely not smooth.

One of Elise’s brothers, Alex, is forced to forge a new life for himself in America after a disastrous falling out with his family. The other, Didier, is incapacitated psychologically and suffers his own trials.

The first half of the book is reasonably enjoyable, but once World War 2 is over it becomes a slog of in-fighting that doesn’t reflect well on any of the characters. At close to 500 pages, I admit it took some grit to finish it. There’s an almost melodramatic pattern of killing off certain characters to the point where you know in advance who is doomed in order to move the plot on. No guessing as to who must die to reach the happy-ever-after conclusion.

Sure, this is a story about wine production, but there is a lot of drunkenness too. It is hard to generate much sympathy for Elise with her bitter and idle life and her impulsive actions. She’s self-absorbed and unappealing and becomes even more so as the years pass by. Her ruthless American niece, Willow, is just as bad as she turns into a clone of her aunt. Both Laurent and Didier have greater depth and they were the only characters that kept me reading.

Apart from needing a harder edit overall, there are also a fair number of anachronisms and proof-reading errors that are surprising in a book from a major trade publisher.
 
Two-and-a-half stars

amazon.com

amazon.co.uk (Kindle)

---