The Guineveres by Sarah Domet

The Guineveres is a brilliant piece of writing.  Engaging emotionally, drawing us into a reclusive convent school, the novel is one of the first examples I’ve seen of proliferative story-writing in the first person plural—though the novel was technically set as first person singular from Vere’s perspective.  I was so impressed with this little group of girls, so interlinked that they were often a ‘we’ in their experiences.  Conversations were relayed, so often not seeming to find it important to differentiate who said what.  “Someone said.”  “One of us said.”  In most books, that would have been annoying and disconcerting, but in The Guineveres, it emphasized the unity of the bond these girls had.

I was momentarily confused by the insertion of each of the girls’ pre-convent histories, again told from the first person POV—the only time it veered away from Vere.  Once I realized what these jumps were about, though, I appreciated them even more—they were artfully interspersed throughout the novel, making us long to hear Vere’s history, which she saved for last.

The other deviation from the story were the tales of women saints—several of them, masterfully and dramatically told, also interspersed through the book.  After the first of these, however, I found them rather in the way of the story about the girls, which I was anxious to get back to.  Overall, though, they leave me feeling that the story is epic, grander than I would have remembered it being.  And they emphasize an aspect of Catholicism I have never given much thought to—not in any sort of appreciative way.  I’d previously read some short descriptions of the terrible fates of several saints, quickly realizing it wasn’t something I wanted to think about, but Domet makes them come alive for us in a poignant, beautiful way that my summaries did not. 

The Guineveres is overall a poignant, beautiful story, too.  Domet doesn’t coddle us with fairytale happy endings, but neither does she devastate us completely.  She somehow has us desperate to run away from the convent and yet duly impressed with it at the same time—all the while not romanticizing the religious workers—except that I adore the overly-strict Sister Fran, for some reason. But that’s me. I read pensively, afraid of the possibilities, but Domet kept me sympathetic to nearly everyone in the book.  I highly recommend this read!