"The Black Water Lilies" by Michel Bussi

Detective story as a genre is simultaneously new and worn-out as on the one hand it was developed in the middle of 19^th century, which makes it very young in terms of literary history, and on the other it is currently so overused by mass culture that you can hardly imagine it can bring something surprising to an experienced reader. Still the novel of Michel Bussi proves it possible.

The house of Claude Monet in Giverny

Jérôme Morval, ophthalmologist and passionate art collector is found dead in the acclaimed Monet’s gardens in the picturesque village of Giverny. In his pocket the police finds a postcard representing Monet’s famous “Waterlilies” which reads: “Eleven years old. Happy birthday”. This could be the beginning of a usual crime plot but for the fact that the book is not about Morval at all. His death and the mysterious connection of this event to the works of Claude Monet are merely a trigger to some much more dramatic and complicated events.

This death is strangely connected with three women – prodigious 11-year-old artist Fannette, attractive and sensual schoolteacher Stephanie and 80-year old lady who also plays the role of the narrator. The characters seem very different at first sight but what ties the three of them together is a touch of so called bovarysme – inclination to escapism (strong desire to leave the limited world of Giverny in search of vague greater opportunities).

Much of the suspense (and magnetism) of the novel is provided by a wide system of illusions thoroughly created by the author. Bussi plays with his reader, showing him the same scenes from different sides, letting the reader make suppositions about what is true and what is deception. The three plot lines depicting the three heroines move almost like parallels, but then start coming closer to interweave in quite an unexpected knot towards the end.

The illusion starts with the narrator herself as the old lady’s perception of events can be quite tricky, especially when she’s made it her point to create a mystery around the murder and what follows it. She keeps dropping hints and foreshadowing here and there but they are so vague and sometimes even contradicting that the reader can’t help thinking she is playing some kind of trick. Introducing the image of unreliable narrator, the author creates a certain air of surrealism around the events he describes. His aim here is to make the reader dive into mysterious atmosphere and feel as uncertain and confused as the characters do, and moreover, to make him doubt his own judgements.

The theme of madness arises throughout the novel, almost every character at a certain moment of time begins to question his (or her) own sanity and common sense. The author challenges the reader to try placing the border between ordinary emotion and complete outrage, between reasonable actions and thoughtless impulses, between objective reality and pictures of a crazy mind. This line, I must tell you, is often very difficult to draw.

The motif of insanity is closely connected with the theme of creativity and geniality. Let’s face the truth, how many real geniuses could claim to be emotionally stable? Does geniality occur in people who are reserved and calm, and perfectly reasonable or is it unavoidably connected with certain mental conditions? So many great minds like Edgar Poe, Vincent van Gogh or Ludwig van Beethoven were considered lunatics while still alive, Sylvia Plath suffered from depressions while Ernest Hemingway was inclined to suicide and Pablo Picasso was infamous for his sadistic behaviour with his lovers. If mental illness and creativity are not directly connected with each other, they surely happen to be very closes in many instances.

Speaking about this very novel, this problem concerns Claude Monet as well for he devoted his last thirty years to depicting the waterlilies in the nearby pond, he painted 250 different variants! Can you believe that? Surely no one could call such extreme obsession natural. These paintings come in all different shapes and colours but one: no black-coloured lilies were ever found. Therefore art collectors have created a half-mythical supposition that there must be another, unknown variant of the lilies painted in Gothic manner. The search for it and the connection of this mysterious painting to Morval’s murder develops into a separate plot line in Bussi’s novel.

So why the waterlilies? Throughout history these flowers were used symbolically in many art works and their meaning can be interpreted in different ways. On the one hand, they stand for something mysterious, unknown, but exceptionally attractive and they are often connected with female side of human nature. Thus, our three female characters can be associated with waterlilies. On the other hand, the nymphéas are often seen as ominous signs, representing everything dark and deadly. And indeed, as soon as waterlilies appear nearby, the events take a tragic turn.

Apart from the symbolism and the image of unreliable narrator, the author uses many other techniques to create the necessary atmosphere and make the reader even more confused. The setting, quite usually for the genre, is very limited, there are a few key places which the characters visit throughout the story. Such seclusion is contrasted to the large number of secondary characters who appear alongside the main ones, from the investigators to neighbours and school friends.

Discovering more and more details about the characters the reader cannot help noticing that many of these details are repeated and related to each other, which helps us to guess that the system of characters in this novel is based on creating doppelgangers (two or more characters who are either reflections or oppositions of each other). Moreover, many characters can be associated with famous impressionist artists, which causes even more confusion for the reader if he notices it. The whole novel works like a mirror labyrinth where each figure is multiplied and distorted. The reader can count the characters by their names, but how many people are there really in this labyrinth? How can you guess if you see the real person or merely a reflection?

One of the Monet's depictions of the waterlily pond

The time is the only thing which seems stable, certain in this story as the author gives an exact date in the beginning of each chapter. However, if we look closer, we will come to realisation that the time stated is true only for the narrator, but what about other characters? Changing the figures on the stage the author doesn’t say anything about the time so in fact, especially remembering that the narrator and other main characters do not interact for the major part of the story, the reader can’t be sure if he’s got the chronological order of events right.

In reality the only thing that keeps the plot lines together is a number of artistic details, the objects which surround characters and often help careful observers to understand the connections between the characters, the plot lines and the time layers. This is one of few detective stories which would be interesting to reread as only after you will have read the ending you will understand how many details you have missed while reading.

To finish this review let us return to the theme of creativity and art in the novel. Not only it helps to create the necessary atmosphere, it also serves as a means of expressing the feelings of characters, and although Monet himself doesn’t appear on the stage during the performance he functions as an off-stage character and we can surely feel the presence of his personality as well as his genius and his works. This novel is partially historical and partially biographical as it makes the reader acquainted with impressionist art in general and Monet’s life in particular.

The interaction of different types of art within one work is called intermediality and this novel is a great example of this phenomenon. Vivid descriptions of paintings and places of natural beauty which inspired them brings this piece of literature closer to visual arts and, at the same time, serve to convey the emotions of characters. All this gives much food to the reader’s imagination and helps to bring the story to life.

The waterlily pond in Giverny nowadays

So, the beauty of this book mostly concerns the form, the outer representation, and if you can recognize and admire the little tricks which the author uses to capture the reader’s attention and turn it to the necessary direction, then this novel will become for you not only a captivating story but truly an alluring work of art.