Review: The Marriage of Opposites, by Alice Hoffman
S&S, 2015. 362 pp. $28

The second line of this novel reads, “I rarely did as I was told.”

No kidding. Rachel Pomié, growing up in St. Thomas in the early nineteenth century, has a hard road ahead. Born to a family of Marranos, Portuguese Jews who fled the Inquisition for Danish territory where they might live and worship freely, she finds little freedom. Her best (only) friend is Jestine, daughter of a slave, who has even less. However, both girls swear they’ll have true love, and from the youngest age, Rachel steeps herself in African lore about magic, spirits, and herbal remedies, many of which are meant to allow love to take possession of her.

But the Marrano community, fearful that Danish tolerance will go only so far, polices itself rigorously so that no news of scandal reaches the motherland. Strict rules limit women from inheriting property or making their own decisions, but that’s only part of it. Men may have mistresses, as some do, especially among the African population. But children from these unions are quickly disowned, and women take the fall. Even in her girlhood, Rachel grasps the hypocrisy that rules the island and senses how deeply gossip and ostracism can cut.

For a while, her father shelters her, teaching her how to read ledgers at the family store and granting her the run of his library, both unheard of for a girl. Already, rumors of her unearthly nature have circulated, possibly fanned by her mother, whom she detests and who returns the favor.

But around the time Rachel turns twenty, her father tells her that the family business is literally foundering—storm have wrecked the ships in which they’ve invested, and which provide the goods they sell in their store. The only way out, he says, is for Rachel to marry a well-off widower much older than she, who’ll help restore the business. Papa won’t hear any objections.

To her surprise, Rachel takes to her stepchildren, and vice versa. Her husband, though kind to her, is another matter, and they both know it. She wants passion to sweep her away, and though they have many children together, whom she loves, she’s unsatisfied. Worse, the business continues to suffer; her self-sacrifice seems in vain.

So you know that Rachel will pursue a forbidden love. And since, as the jacket flap says, she will give birth to a son who’ll one day become a famous painter, her life has only just started.

On this lush island, anything can happen, so it’s a hothouse for conflict and for Hoffman’s trademark magical realism. Witness the first page, as Rachel introduces herself and her place of birth:

Other people shivered when the rains came and were chilled to the bone, but I longed for cold weather. Nights on our island were pitch dark, the air fragrant and heavy, perfect for dreaming. As soon as the light began to fade it was possible to hear the swift footsteps of lizards rattling through the leaves and the hum of the gnats as they came through the windows. Inside our stucco houses, we slept within tents made of thick white netting, meant to keep mosquitoes away . . . All the same, huge clouds of insects drifted through the heat, especially at dusk, bringing a fever that could burn a man alive.

I’m not sure people in 1807 connected insects to disease, but the truth here is greater than that. To be precise, Rachel appears in the historical record, as do a few other characters. But read this book for the seething prose and the people who also seethe; nobody here is self-contained, even the biddies itching to punish Rachel or anyone else who challenges convention.

And nobody challenges convention like an artist. The boy who will drop a couple of first names and become Camille Pissarro appears around page 200, whereupon he kicks the narrative into higher gear. Not that the story needs kicking, mind you, because Rachel and Jestine and others have been doing plenty of that. But from the first, Camille challenges his mother, testing her willingness to extend him the same latitude she demanded from her parents. In most ways, she fails, which makes her a hypocrite too, and creates even more conflict.

Also, Hoffman has brilliantly reimagined how an artist learns to think about color, even at a young age, and what he does with it. I have no idea whether this is historically accurate, but I don’t think that matters. By her description, the child Pissarro paints from nature with a vividness that reminds me of Henri Rousseau in content but Van Gogh in style—interesting, because Pissarro became an Impressionist. I associate him with Parisian street scenes.

His mother tells him, however, “The way you paint doesn’t look like anything in this world. I worry that you have something wrong with your vision.” Perfect.

My only criticism of The Marriage of Opposites is the ending, which seems flat, as if the story just peters out. Whether that’s the problem with biographical fiction, trying to adjust the demands of storytelling with the narrative of a life, I don’t know. But I highly recommend the novel anyway.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.