Ignorance: A Novel
The tragic consequences of conformity—in one woman’s life and in a continent at war—are on painful display in this multivoiced narrative. Jeanne, the central figure and most prominent narrator, is a poor, half-Jewish girl living in France as WWII approaches and arrives. She strays dangerously from convention as the war goes on, leaving her not just the Germans but her very neighbors to fear as well. Her rebellion begins in childhood after she, along with fellow convent boarder Marie-Angele, is abused by a religious figure. Marie-Angele, however, responds to this by becoming fiercely decorous, and in her righteousness becomes as much of a threat to Jeanne as any scapegoating hoard, suspicious German, or abusive curé. Roberts’ characters are electric and affecting, her prose elegant. One reads in perfect confidence that the mosaic of voices will make a meaningful whole—but it doesn’t. There are hints of larger significance, intimations of pathos—but these seem unearned and false. In pieces, it is an illuminatingly narrow and feminine view of the war, but as a whole, this novel will leave some readers feeling disappointed. --Meg Kinney