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Susan McBeth’s
TRAVEL BY THE BOOK

“LISETTE’S LIST” by SUSAN VREELAND

hich cities are on your summer travel list? If She plays the dutiful wife role well and, although
you are an art aficionado, perhaps you will annoyed at first, Lisette tolerates Pascal as he share
Wseek out the superb new architecture in Ber- stories of his former life working in the nearby red,
lin, the sculptural masterpieces housed in Florence, orange, and golden-hued ochre mines that Vreeland
London’s multiple antiquities collections, the “Mu- so deliciously describes, and she is fascinated to learn
seum Mile” in New York City, or even San Miguel that it is these very mines that provided paint pig-
de Allende’s colony of art and artists. Of course, no ments used by impressionist painters.
list of this sort would be complete without Paris and
Provence, birthplace of impressionism and talent- Her begrudging spirit subsides, and Lisette forges a
ed nineteenth century painters like Camille Pissarro, bond with the old man, entranced each time he re-
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul counts his interactions with
Cézanne, and Claude Monet. famous artists like Chagall and
Pisarro. She is also stunned
And if the latter are your des- to learn that the mesmerizing
tinations of choice, don’t forget paintings she had daily ad-
to compile a complementary mired in his quaint home (until
reading list that includes New he and his grandson hid them
York Times bestselling author from the Nazis before André
Susan Vreeland’s newest his- went off to war) are actually
torical novel, “Lisette’s List.” those he acquired in his young-
er days as a framemaker, when
Bringing to life the beauty, he traded frames for paintings
charm, and art of provincial from artists who had insuffi-
France, this richly imagined cient monetary means.
love story follows young new-
lywed wife Lisette as she is torn If you are not familiar with the
from her sophisticated world as novel’s central works of art,
a Parisian art gallery apprentice and even if you are, close your
to the small Provençal village eyes and allow Vreeland to
of Roussillon , where husband bring them to life with her rich
André has agreed to move to visual feast of pictorialization
care for his ailing grandfather, that connect the paintings to
Pascal, in the years leading up the surrounding ochre-imbued
to World War II. hillsides. It is here where Vree-
land shines best, delving into
As the lovers arrive in Roussil- the mission common to all of
lon, Vreeland simultaneously charms a reluctant Li- her multiple bestselling novels to acutely depict the
sette, as well as the reader, with a sumptuous feast of relationship between art and personal connection.
the sensorial kind. Her tantalizing descriptions of the
local landscape provide a hint of the inspiration that While the novel would have been better served to
drove the great impressionist painters to create such omit certain unnecessary connections, like jilted lov-
masterpieces as Cézanne’s Quarry of Bebémus, Pis- er Maxime, it is easy to forgive minor authorial trans-
sarro’s Red Roofs, Corner of a Village, Summer, and gressions when the multi-sensorial banquet provided
Marc Chagall’s Promenade, by Vreeland, from the “raucous cackle” of roosters, to
the sweet almond confectionery of marzipan, to the
The beauty of art is soon replaced by the ugliness ambrosial terrain of Cezanne’s landscapes, sates so
of war when the Nazis threaten their little vil- delectably. Bon appetit, reader!
lage, and André is called away to the front, leaving
Lisette to care for Pascal. ~By Susan McBeth

Wine Dine & Travel Summer/Fall 2015 89