Featured Reading Guide
Michelle de Kretser
It is the 14th of July, and the world is about to change … Set at the start of the French Revolution, the story centres on a young woman, from a down-at-heel aristocratic family, caught up in the bloodthirsty early years of the Terror, as events in Paris are duplicated in a small town in the South-West of France. But her private passion is her search to create, by grafting, cross-pollination and experiment, an exotic repeat-flowering crimson rose such as had never been grown before then in Europe. Meanwhile, an American balloonist lands in the fields nearby, and falls in love with her sister; and…
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topAbout the Book
It is the 14th of July, and the world is about to change … Set at the start of the French Revolution, the story centres on a young woman, from a down-at-heel aristocratic family, caught up in the bloodthirsty early years of the Terror, as events in Paris are duplicated in a small town in the South-West of France. But her private passion is her search to create, by grafting, cross-pollination and experiment, an exotic repeat-flowering crimson rose such as had never been grown before then in Europe. Meanwhile, an American balloonist lands in the fields nearby, and falls in love with her sister; and the young local working-class doctor is torn between ethics, reason, revolutionary zeal and unrequited love.A beautiful, elliptical novel about history, love, revolution, the march of science and progress, all beautifully mirrored in the rose-growing metaphor and the rose-grower’s passion.
topMichelle de Kretser interview/review
From an interview in The Weekend Australian by Helen Elliott
Michelle de Kretser has no recollection of ‘wanting to be a writer’ and still thinks of herself as an editor. She started work on what was to become The Rose Grower in the year’s leave she had taken from her job as senior editor with Lonely Planet…’ the novel was just hovering, not definite…’
Although she might not have started with a succinct idea of where she was going, she is clear about the emotional genesis of the book. “Over the past few years, Chris my boyfriend, and I have gone walking in France, two years ago we walked in the south-west, a part of pre-Revolutionary Gascony. At the same time Chris was reading Simon Schama’s Citizens, his book about the French Revolution, the two things sort of became associated in my mind.”
Back home “I was doing all these things I wanted to do – living – but there was something else. You know like those Bruegel paintings where there’s something important like the crucifixion happening off in the left-hand corner that I should be taking notice of. So I started to write…”
topStarting Points for Discussion
- Stephen Fletcher, the charismatic American balloonist, makes a dramatic entrance. Discuss his contribution to the plot. What does he symbolise, taking into consideration his origins and attitudes?
- The ‘trivial’ and domestic (food, fashion, gardening) are extensively detailed. How does this preoccupation with the minutiae of 18th century life contribute to the unsettling sense of realism when the Terror invades this idyll?
- De Kretser sets the rose at the centre of her novel. Why does she do this and what does the rose symbolise? What do you think the ‘garden’ represents? And to what extent does the ‘Nature’ imagery colour the novel as a whole?
- Discuss the conflict of the progressive and the passive. Compare the fates of the ‘progressive’ characters such as Dr Morel with Saint-Pierre who judges himselfguilty of ‘inattention, selfishness, complacency’. (p.281) Consider the Enlightenment philosophy and the Darwinian ‘evolution’ theory.
- Compare the three Saint-Pierre sisters different attitudes and reactions to their rapidly changing worlds. Discuss the themes of denial, sublimation and obsession.
- Consider the conclusion. Is there hope and a moral at the end? Examine the author’s narrative stance. Is it dispassionate throughout the novel? Do you think she condemns Sophie and if so, why?
Other Books by Michelle de Kretser
The Hamilton Case
The place is Ceylon, the time the 1930s. Set amid tea plantations, corruption…
The Lost Dog
Suggested Further Reading
- The Vintner’s Luck ~ Elizabeth Knox
- Madame Bovary ~ Gustave Flaubert
- Tulip Fever ~ Deborah Moggach
- Candide ~ Voltaire
- The Scarlet Pimpernel ~ Baroness Orczy
- The Social Contract ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- Sense and Sensibility ~ Jane Austen