I ought to say from the outset, the Francophile ticks me off, especially since my working days are filled dusting home-wares and gifts at the little gift shop at the hospital. The shelves are filled with replica earring stand Eiffel Towers, French Impressionist artist images on key rings and cosmetic bags, lady walking poodle statues and carved wooden signs that read, I Love Paris. I spend hours displaying and rearranging stuff that affirms an aesthetic, a certain notion of Chic; appreciated by women who think stripy skivvies and berets always look hip. For me, there’s something false, tizzy, and full of affectation about the French fetishists. 

So, a modern gothic novel, set in the wine region with a Francophile-Aussie heroine, full of forgetfulness and tizzy-ness, is not what I’d usually choose to read. 

In Le Chateau, Charlotte is married to the rich and handsome Henri, heir of an enormous estate. She has two twenty-five metre swimming pools, one outdoors and one indoors. The latter in her spa complex built as a commercial venture. She’s lost her memory. 

Ridout’s piece builds narrative suspense in a beach-read way, if you like Madison magazine. Look honestly, there’s nothing wrong with that, if that’s her audience. Then again, maybe I missed the work’s subtle mockery of the genre. Le Chateau has some breathtakingly bad sentences. I wondered if they were deliberate, for laughs. Perhaps this is Ridout’s subversion of the genre. For example, ‘I caress his biceps, their smooth hardness, his face, the rough stubble, the indentations.’ And, ‘The sun’s rays wake me the next day, washing over us in waves.’ The sex scenes made me cringe. 

I spent seven hours at Le Chateau as Charlotte got her memory back and discovered which bloke she was in love with before the accident and deals with her demented mother-in-law. It was predictable. I was glad to get on a plane back to Brisbane. 

- Michelle Karen