She Treads Softly: What She Saw

Sunday, May 21, 2017

What She Saw

What She Saw by Gerard Stembridge
HarperCollins: 5/23/17
eBook review copy; 320 pages
ISBN-13: 9780062568984

What She Saw by Gerard Stembridge is a so-so novel that follows a woman through 24 hours in Paris.

Lana Gibson has decided to travel to Paris to see the Edward Hopper retrospective. She stays at the expensive Hotel Le Chevalier located on the Right Bank and assures her unknowing husband after-the-fact that she will be fine and take her meds to control her manic phases. She does see the Hopper exhibition, but she also becomes increasingly obsessed with seeing who is using the private elevator to the exclusive penthouse suite on the top floor. As happenstance and curiosity collide, she actually gets on the elevator when the door is open and is whisked to the top floor. When the door opens she sees quickly observes that an orgy is taking place, but she also witnesses a young woman trying to escape from a naked older man. She quickly snaps a few pictures with her cell phone before the elevator doors close again.

It turns out that the older man is Jean-Luc Fournier, an important French politician. Lana is already on the radar of his security detail, who have noticed her interest in the private elevator. Now she is on the run from the security men and needs to figure out what exactly is going on and who she can trust before her time runs out. The narrative follows Lana's perspective and that of a chauffeur for Fournier, Ferdinand (Ferdie). Ferdie has his own stakes in the outcome.

I really wanted to like her simply due to her desire to travel to see the Hopper retrospective, but Lana is a hard character to relate to or find any empathy for. She is also not a very well-developed character. Mainly you learn she doesn't seem to really even like her husband, she's on meds (apparently for bipolar disorder), and she's way-too-weirdly-curious about the penthouse elevator door. This makes it a challenge to feel invested in what happens to her, especially when she's repeatedly and consistently making some rather stupid actions and decisions.

The writing is good, but the 24 hour format seemed to just drag out the action and didn't work for me. Those who love novels set in Paris and Francophiles will likely appreciate the setting. I had a difficult time immersing myself in this novel, probably due to my increasing annoyance with Lana.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of HarperCollins.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.