RATING: GOOD BUT TOO LONG
SPOILERS!!!
I finished the book at the beginning of this past week. I found the book interesting, but it dragged for too long, and the happy ending contrasted with the tone of the rest of the book.
Antoinette is so obsessed with her love for Emile, who she keeps visiting in prison. Emile thinks that he will find guilty, and he hopes that he will get transportation to New Caledonia. At the end of the trial he and Pierre are found guilty and sentenced to death, but the president agrees to commute the sentence to transportation. Emile keeps declaring his love to Antoinette, and she agrees to go to New Caledonia with him. As she knows they will need money not just for the passage there, but also Emily tells her that they will need to grease the guards' palms, so she starts working in a brothel. When the man who is her regular leaves his wallet unattended and full of money, Antoninette takes the money, and the Madame calls the police and Antoinette is arrested and imprisoned.
Marie visits Antoinette in prison, and she still is blind to Emile's crimes. He writes a book about the murder of the tavern owner, but his version in the book is very different to what he testified during the trial. Then another of his friends confesses to another crime and claims that Emile was also involved. When Marie visits, Antoinette tells her that Michel Knoblock only confessed because he has the idea of going to New Caledonia, and she begs Marie find the calendar where she marked her encounters with Emile, which will be Emile's alibi. Marie thinks that Emile is bad news, and when she finds the calendar, she burns it. In her next visit to her sister Marie claims that she couldn't find the calendar, and Antoinette realises that Marie won't help Emile, and she tells her to stop coming to see her.
During the trial Marie learns that there is no danger for Emile to be sentenced to death because a person cannot be be given a new sentence when he has already been sentenced to death (even though the sentence was changed). Marie tries to see Antoinette, but her sister won't see her, so she sends her mother with an article which explains that Emile is safe, but Antoinette can't really read. Then Marie realises that as she got rid of the calendar which would save Emile and Michel, the latter is sentenced to death, and she realises that Michel is innocent, just a fool.
Marie feels so guilty that she keeps crying all the time. When she fails to turn up at the theatre several times, she is dismissed and she starts drinking absinthe. Antoinette realises what kind of person Emile is when Colette visits her and she tells her that Emile tried to seduce her, and when Antoinette was not present, he laughed at her with his friends. That makes her go off him, and as soon as she is released from jail, she wants to see Marie because she knows how Marie will be suffering. Actually, Marie is even considering killing herself, but thankfully, Antoinette finds her and the two talk, and Antoinette tells a lie when she says that the mark in the calendar was a mark that Emile forced her to put.
The epilogue takes place in 1995. Marie has married the baker she worked for, and they have two children, and they are happy. Antoinette is now a seamstress and she is a good one. And Charlotte is the only one who remains a dancer. I found the ending too perfect and happy in comparison with the tone of the novel.
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