To Capture What We Cannot Keep
Beatrice Colin
Allen & Unwin, $29.99
The cover of this book does it no favours, misleadingly suggesting that it's a piece of standard commercial romance fiction. In fact, it reveals Beatrice Colin as a writer of ability and ambition, as she explores the year 1887 and the construction of the Eiffel Tower. Glasgow and Paris are skilfully evoked in this tale of Scottish widow Cait, sent to Paris as the chaperone of a pair of young siblings, the orphaned niece and nephew of a rugged Glasgow engineer, who both seem hell-bent on self-destruction. The mutual attraction between Cait and Emile, one of the chief engineers of the tower, is thwarted by the usual 19th-century things: respectability, money, and class. The difficulties of Cait's dealings with her charges and of her relationship with Emile are dealt with in an oblique, light-handed way that sometimes recalls Henry James, and the resolution is both satisfying and realistic.