What We’re Reading: Disaster, Calamity, Ecstasy

From the cover of The Violins of Saint-Jacques.

I bet you didn’t know that , recognized as Britain’s greatest travel writer during his lifetime, penned a novel, or that it was adapted into a three-act opera in 1966. No new productions are scheduled, but was reissued last week, so I’ve spent my mornings with a nameless narrator listening to Berthe de Rennes, an elderly Frenchwoman, recall a Mardi Gras ball on the titular Caribbean island in February 1902. is a kind of travel book, too: chock-full of elaborate details about French architecture, local politics, geography, and the weather. The moldering French aristocracy’s tense relations with local “creoles” are never far from view, nor is the Romeo-and-Juliet-style plot between the mayor’s and governor’s families. The island’s volcano lingers above the lot. Though Saint-Jacques is a figment, the novel’s later, defining event ( is based on something that occurred in Saint Pierre on Martinique, on the same date. In his travel writing, Fermor had an uncanny ability to take readers somewhere impossible; so, too, with this novel. Saint-Jacques never existed and the world it’s based on is long gone, yet is a full-color Caribbean cruise–cum–French tragedy, one well worth the trip. —