By Daphne Du Maurier
Still in the first third of the book. By her I have read Rebecca and My Cousin Rachel and perhaps something more. Hers are good reads - she takes you along on the reading journey. So is this one. Although this is less of her usual fiction, but more of a family history. In portraying the family, it also portrays the France of that period, 1700s.
The Glassblowers live as a community, in the forests near the fuel source for the furnaces. It is art and craft and it is a closed world. But in this world if a family member wishes to stand apart, as part of the world outside, there is strife and friction. In it, reflection of any closed knit community, which keeps its members close, and in such close knit places the individual is not as much of an individual self as part of the community. For example, the father and his brother do not differentiate their surname, but the children have the need to be identified separately for their work. Perhaps also a reflection of where a craft becomes an art and individual flourishes come to be recognised rather than the provence of the workshop.
Still early pages.
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