The Time of Cherries

The Time of Cherries

By Michael Hollington

Genre:-Historical Fiction

Pages:-544

Publisher:-The Book Guild

Blurb:-A historical fiction novel documenting a young woman's struggle against the backdrop of two key historical events-the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune of 1870/71.

A back-against-the-wall survival story of a woman who faces a forced marriage, her child being taken, imprisonment, the indignities of selling her body, the freezing winter of 1870, starvation and the risk of spying.

 Covers a time period infrequently covered in English-language fiction.

Burgundy, 1861

Christine 'Kiki' Vellay, the daughter of vineyard workers, is forced to marry an older man in exchange for a piece of land. He abuses her. Seduced by a young naval cadet she plots to run away. When her husband is killed during the attempt, she finds herself wrongly accused of his murder.

 Kiki is on the run.

On reaching Paris in disguise, Kiki discovers she is pregnant and takes on various jobs to survive. When her child is stolen from her, she begins a desperate attempt to find him. Her story takes her from imprisonment in the infamous Conciergerie, to a chateau in the Loire, back to Paris under siege-as a spy-during the Franco-Prussian war, culminating in a dramatic conclusion in the final bloody week of the Paris Commune.

 A story of resilience in the face of immense hardship, The Time of Cherries is a gripping account of a woman's instinct and longing for her child.

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My Review:- Christine Vellay (Kiki as she was known) was 15 year-old when her father decided to give her hand in marriage for the price of some land. The Vellays had worked the lands in Meursault, a small community in Burgundy, as labourers of the vineyards. Saturday, 27th July was the day Kiki became Madame Augustave Monnier. After the wedding, Kiki decided that the only way this marriage could work was with some rulers and she made this clear, but after time these rules were broken. After time Kiki gave birth to a baby boy, but this wasn’t going to work out the way a mother would expect for her and her child. I don’t do spoilers but I will say the ended wasn’t what I expected. This was a long book which I read over a few sittings, but I do think it worked well with this story. Christine (Kiki) was a strong woman, knowing what she wanted in life and did her best to do this .