Based broadly on the character and story of artist Paul Gaugin, Daisy Lafarge’s novel follows the brief relationship between the eponymous Paul and the first-person narrator Frances. Frances comes to Paul’s commune-style-farm in the French Pyrenees to volunteer for a couple of weeks after an affair with her university professor turns sour in Paris. A couple of decades his junior, Frances is easily wooed by the life experience and adventures that Paul’s years have given him. She quickly transfers her affections from her erstwhile professor to the intriguing Paul.

However, over the three weeks that the novel is set, it becomes evident that Paul’s ego, his tendency to take over other people’s stories (as his name takes over this novel which is really Frances’ narrative), and his exaggeration about his own importance outbalances any genuinely interesting characteristics he has. Also out of balance is the power dynamic between the two characters, which creates a lingering sense of unease and trepidation throughout the novel. Frances is passive and silent in response to Paul’s domineering behaviour, finding herself unable to resist him. Ultimately, the claustrophobic feeling of the novel is challenged when Frances finds herself re-evaluating what freedom and autonomy mean to her.

My review is based on an ARC from Granta Publishing and NetGalley.

After her affair with the older A.B comes to an end, Frances arrives at the beautiful eco farm called Noa Noa in the Pyrenees mountains of France.

The charismatic but controlling Paul is in charge of the farm, and Frances is quickly enamored by the beautiful surroundings, and also curious about the power Paul seems too hold over those around him.

We learn that her previous lover A.B was controlling, and very much abused his power and influence as a professor to start a sexual relationship with Frances, and break down her sense of self.

At the start of the book you hope that this is a new beginning for Frances, and a way for her to reclaim control of her own life. But it is quickly revealed that this is instead Frances falling into a pattern of abusive relationships, and this is sadly very much a very realistic scenario.
Frances might come of as infuriatingly passive, when she is really broken down from previous trauma and therefore lacks the strength to break free from yet another toxic relation.

Lafarge writes lyrically and paints a very vivid picture of Frances surroundings and the people close to her.
And that raises questions as to why Frances as a character isn’t more built up, throughout the book you certainly sympathize with her, but it’s hard to really care for the character because she has so little backstory, but the reasoning for this will be revealed at the end of the book.

Lafarge cleverly includes old mythological female figures to highlight the way a lot of women are abused by society and the people around them. And this story certainly puts a spotlight on how powerful men in arts, politics and other powerful positions have gotten away with abusing and exploiting women, with very little consequences.

If Noa Noa sounds familiar to you it might be because famed artist Paul Gauguin wrote a memoir of his time in Tahiti called “Noa Noa: The Tahitian Journal” as a way to take control of the stories that spread about him his relationships with adolescents.

Paul in the book is not very subtly based on Paul Gauguin, who is still a celebrated and respected artist, even though his relations with underage children are widely known.

“Paul” is a well written debut novel with a painful, realistic and important story.
But in my case, I had to get to thhe end of the book to fully appreciate it.

An uncomfortable but accurate portrayal of an abusive relationship. A realistic exploration of all the complexities of a toxic relationship. This book is unsettling but hard hitting and worth a read.

This book is well written but I found it a bit simplistic in the handling of its themes, which ultimately was a disappointment to me as it was the main reason why I wanted to read the book. To put it bluntly, it comes off as another "shitty men are shit" novel - so playing well into popular culture, but I was craving more ambiguity, more sophistication. It feels like it takes the easy way out in order to deliver what I found to be quite a simplistic and straightforward message, and as a result it became very hard for me to care about anything I'd just read; it felt like I was just being told what to think as opposed to being allowed to decide for myself. I also found the writing quite heavy handed, which is a personal preference. It's an ambitious subject, though, and kudos to the author for approaching it. Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for the ARC.

I was really looking forward to reading this book, but unfortunately it didn't live up to expectations. I enjoyed the writing style, the setting and claustrophobic tension but the plot meandered too much for me and the characters seemed too detached.

I don't know how to feel about this. I felt repulsed over Paul throughout the whole book, which I guess was the point. I couldn't stand Frances' passivity, which I guess was the point too. I wished we had seen more of Frances' past and less of Paul.

A compulsively detestable read following Frances a young British woman travelling through France, moving from one unequal relationship to another, on a somewhat hellish road trip she did not consent to.

Lefarge has taking her inspiration from lauded painter Paul Gauguin, an exercise in the rose tinted glasses of history. The books namesake is a man who runs a sham farm in the rural french mountains, retreating there after spending time galavanting as nothing more than a modern coloniser, staking claim to the traditions and experiences of South Pacific Islanders he allegedly lived with whilst travelling.

From the start readers are shown the holes in Paul’s facade, and intriguing is frances’ own self awareness. Diverging from its predecessors in the toxic\ abusive sub genre, the likes of my dark Vanessa and Lolita, we do not view a man through a lens of lust and romance, there is no convincing the reader that the presenting relationship is desirable to its victim. Instead we are aware of said danger, and precede with caution.

Readers skin crawl as Frances’ edges away from each interaction, as each hole in Paul’s checkered history is ripped open. We see what is coming, but so does she. The passivity of Frances cements her as an object to be set upon by others, lacking much sense of self. It appears her only motivation for continuing to stay in proximity to Paul is the desire to keep running from a banal reality awaiting her in England.

A story approached from a distance, with backstories rarely provided. A seemingly stylistic choice by Lefarge to flesh out Paul with a history full of deception, contrasting with Frances whose past is punctuated only by another troublesome man.

Horrifying but wholly realistic, many Paul carbon copies have crossed my own path in hostels and travel spots, it makes for an modern day fable of power and passivity, women beware.

I’m going to include some content warnings for this book BUT they are also spoilers - the book unfolds in such a way that it’s impossible to avoid. So, it’s totally up to you whether you look at them or not. They’re at the end of this review.

I was very impressed and completely hooked by Paul, poet Daisy Lafarge’s debut novel. Set in picturesque, sleepy rural southern France, it follows Frances, a recent graduate working on a medieval manuscript in Paris, as she spends her summer staying on picturesque farms, offering her labour in exchange for lodgings as part of a scheme she found online. I won’t go into the plot too much - it would give too much away. But I will say this: this book really gets under your skin. Lafarge does a fantastic job of making you feel uncomfortable, just a little bit at first, so you’re not even sure it’s happening, and gradually turning it up and up, so that by the end you’re almost physically tense and shocked and hoping for a resolution. I knew something was coming, but I didn’t know what, and I totally admire writing which can keep you invested. Bravo.

Content warnings: pedophilia, adult/minor relationship, rape, sexual assault, mental illness

This is one of those books where pretty much nothing happens, but it still manages to be gripping and intriguing. Reading this felt violent and passive at the same time - there didn’t seem to be anything about the plot or characters that I noticed was drawing me in, but I couldn’t stop reading or thinking about it.

Frances is a recently graduated student of medieval history; she escapes from her research assistant job in Paris (something went wrong that is only alluded to at the start) to volunteer at a farm in a remote part of the Pyrénées. Her host, Paul, is an anthropologist and photographer with knowledge of the world and its people (specifically the customs and languages of Tahiti) that fascinates Frances. This story is based on the travel diaries of artist Paul Gauguin, whose exoticised paintings of Tahitian women are echoed in Paul’s photographs and attitude towards the study of anthropology. If you know anything about Gauguin’s relationships you know what happens in this book: Daisy Lafarge transplants him into the modern day, thereby exploring neocolonialism, voyeurism, and gender.

Lafarge explores all these ideas through her characters, without them ever becoming flat. The dialogue is full of complex ideas and motifs, but always feels natural. Frances’s passivity is suffocating, for her and the reader, and feels inescapable. She is being consumed by the men around her with no power to stop it, and this is how I felt reading the book - it was like I was being absorbed by the story and there was nothing I could do about it. She talks about inevitability and history, and even as a reader who knew nothing about Gauguin’s life, I knew that the events had already been set and I was caught up in the flow of them.

I’m not a talented enough writer to describe all the nuances and intricacies of Lafarge’s writing: just know that this book is filled with ideas to explore and symbolism to unpack. My only criticism is that the ending didn’t deliver the impact I was hoping for, but otherwise this is a fascinating and brilliantly written book.

I was attracted to this book by the setting in France, but while reading it this doesn’t seem to play a large part. I didn’t connect with Frances and found her quite annoyingly passive. She is happy to do what other people suggest even when she doesn’t want to. Ultimately, although wel written, the book was disappointing and I wouldn’t recommending to my friends.

What if Paul Gauguin lived in the 21st century? Would his problematic behaviour stand out or might society still accept him?

Frances is a 21 year-old fresh out of uni, volunteering on farms in the south of France but also it turns out fleeing from some sort of unfortunate incident in Paris. She’s shy and uncertain of herself, which means that when she stays with Paul — a confident, charming 40-something anthropologist/artist/hobby farmer — she very quickly falls under his spell.

They end up on a sort of road trip, drifting between acquaintances, and all too soon Paul’s talking over and patronising Frances until it’s almost unbearable to read. To be quite honest I really didn’t get the hold Paul seemed to have over her, and her passivity is hard to take at times, but does make more sense as her backstory is revealed.

However where this really takes a turn from other imbalanced relationship stories is that Paul isn’t just an any arrogant, hypocritical anthropologist, he also happens to bear an uncanny resemblance to the post-impressionist artist Gauguin. There’s a lot of symbolism strewn throughout the book, some more successfully than others. I certainly enjoyed spotting all the references to his life, but it also meant I guessed where the climax of the novel was heading, despite Frances not picking up on the many hints other characters increasingly were dropping...

Overall it was a compelling and pretty enjoyable read, and I’m certainly going to keep an eye out for future work by Lafarge.

What if Gauguin had lived in the 21st century? He has been described as a sexual predator ... How would that work today?

An absorbing coming-of-age novel about a dysfunctional, abusive relationship between Frances, a young research student who flees Paris after a traumatic experience, and a much older man.

Still confused, she sets off on a trip that takes her to work on a few organic farms including Noa Noa. Here she meets Paul, farm owner and amateur anthropologist who has returned from Polynesia to France with lots of artefacts and diaries. The two embark on a trip through the glorious summer landscape of the French countryside.

While initially the novel may resemble a romance, soon little by little the asymmetric relationship begins to crumble: from tiny, imperceptible details, we witness Paul’s psychological manipulations, mansplaining and passive-aggressiveness and how he takes advantage of Frances’ fragility as even darker truths emerge. Although she gradually realises what is going on, we see her unable to react, malleable and often deprived of her voice. Lafarge purposely keeps the tone laconic for immediacy to emphasise Frances’ passivity and self-detachment and replicate the external observer/anthropologist’s gaze. One may be wanting access to her thoughts and more incisive writing and dialogues, but their scarcity is a sign of Frances’ passivity, her silence a response to her trauma. By the end I was totally invested in her character and in the way she looks for a way out and I am actually still fuming when thinking of him.

I was truly fascinated by the way Paul’s character is modelled on Paul Gauguin: the organic community is a modern version of Gauguin’s search for a primitive, pristine world and reflects Lafarge’s concerns with climate issues; as to the artist, modern postcolonial criticism has exposed him as a sexual predator who had wife and children in Europe but used his white privilege to marry and have children with thirteen-year old girls, infecting them with syphilis. Their elusive gaze on canvas says it all.

This makes for a harrowing and enraging read, a nuanced portrayal of the relationship between predator and prey and a compelling coming of age novel.

3.5 rounded up


My thanks to Granta and Netgalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

3.5 rounded down

Besides a brief essay in a collection on gardening/plants this was my first experience of Daisy Lafarge's writing, and as her only other book, Life Without Air, is a poetry collection I was curious as to how she would approach her first novel.

This is a coming of age novel of sorts - the protagonist, Frances, is in France for the summer. Having left Paris where she was working on research relating to medieval history with her professor after a scandal, she travels to rural France to a farm stay where she will be volunteering to escape life in Paris. The host of the farm stay is Paul, an older man who has travelled extensively and comes across as worldly and experienced to Frances. She quickly embarks on a romantic affair with. They go on to take a road trip together, and as Frances learns more about Paul and his history things between the two of them begin to change.

I have never encountered a character as passive as Frances in a novel; she seems to accept with a lack of emotion almost everything that happens to her: changes in circumstance, sex, work, among others. Paul comes across as controlling, condescending and manipulative to the reader, but Frances seems almost unaware of this and goes with the flow of where things in her relationship with Paul take her. I think this captured well the naivety of young relationships, but it did make for somewhat uncomfortable and claustrophobic reading at times too. As others have noted the narrator is detached and withdrawn, and this contributes to and accounts for the slight feeling of discomfit I had throughout.

Overall, I enjoyed the novel and will definitely be checking out Lafarge's other work.

Reading this novel felt like slowly being suffocated by wet towels. At first I was uncomfortable, and then I was struggling for air. I think that means it's a pretty good novel, because it's a terrible uncomfortable story, and I'm no doubt meant to feel uncomfortable while reading it...but. The narrative voice felt so detached to me, and the narrator felt so curiously reluctant to tell her own story, that I was left caring too little about her humanity and her peril. I just wanted to escape.

Although it started out pretty strong, the plot kind of fizzled near the end; I would have liked more depth and a more thorough examination of the character's motives.

Although it’s been very well reviewed, I didn’t personally enjoy this novel very much. Frances’ passivity is one of the central themes of the story but I found it fairly infuriating to read - she frequently chooses to avoid examining the actions of others and in many cases her own thoughts and to me that made for a fairly hollow experience, it was really lacking in emotional complexity. It’s well written but your tolerance for it may depend on how much you connect or sympathise with Frances and unfortunately, in my case, the answer was not much.

Dark, haunting unputdownable a mesmerizing novel that slowly drew me in tillI I could not put it down.A young woman in snared in a relationship with a much older controlling man, So well written an author to follow recommend.#netgalley#granataboojs.

Frances, a recent graduate, follows her mysterious tutor, AB, to Paris to help with medieval research but then something also quite mysterious goes wrong and she ends up sort of on the run, volunteering at eco farms in rural France and getting into a troublesome relationship with one of her hosts, Paul. I liked Paul, it was a good bit of hot weather literary fiction, but, despite the first person narrative, Frances gets a bit lost as a character in her lack of will, always going along with what other people want. The narrative shifts into distanced third person when Frances finally discusses details of her relationship with AB, as if she’s describing someone else’s experiences. This I loved. It expertly broke through the irritation I was starting to have with Frances and let me understand that she had had to totally detach to process trauma. Just perfection, for a moment.

I don't read a lot of literary fiction, but I'm glad I picked up Paul because it really resonated with it. It reminded me of the week of volunteering I did after a breakup in sunny Spain as a way to find myself again, or really to "find myself" for the first time. That relationship was with an older man too, although not as big a gap as in this novel.

For its subject matter it was surprisingly enjoyable, ambling across the quieter parts of France and learning about this quiet Frances. I really felt for her too and reading her story was eye-opening, one I'll remember for a while yet.

Thanks for the review copy. Full review to be posted on Goodreads nearer publication.

I think the outstanding quality of this novel is the tension the author creates. A creeping sense of foreboding builds up as Frances flounders around, at every turn influenced by the last person she speaks to. She is aware of her need to keep things calm by pleasing everyone and is also conscious of her vulnerability as she picks up on knowing glances between others and increasingly direct hints people give her about Paul, yet finds it so difficult to resist him and the seemingly attractive lifestyle he offers. As the tension mounted I found myself imagining increasingly lurid secrets to be revealed and worse and worse scenes playing out between a girl who tends to be passive and ‘amenable’ and an older, controlling man until, poof!, all over, and in a surprisingly abrupt way. Perhaps this is how it is when you are as young as Frances, hard to remember now.

An easy enough read, plenty of little instances of wordplay and references to Paul Gauguin that largely passed me by until I looked up his story afterwards. I look forward to reading more from this author.