Although I have a preference for non fiction history books, I found this fictionalised explication of the story behind the iconic painting Chloe, to be evocative and engaging. It is a wonderfully creative narrative which captures the reader, providing an interesting timeline approach and well crafted narrative.

Thank you to Echo Publishing and NetGalley for a review copy in exchange for my honest opinion.

This is a very creative and captivating book. A painting called Chloe hangs in a Melbourne Hotel since 1909 and so begins a dual timeline story, Chloe's story you can say and what a story it is.

A great idea for a book and I do love the historical aspect and premise of the book and story. This book takes you on not one but two journeys and the characters are wonderfully developed and very interesting. I do love the two very different settings in this story as well the mystery surrounding the story of the painting and how it came to be in a Melbourne Hotel.

I really enjoyed reading this book and found it quite interesting and intriguing and the two stories really worked well to create the one book. I must say I also love that it wasn't a long book as the story was told well for the length of the book. Great read.

Thank you NetGalley and Echo Publishing for giving me the opportunity to read and review this book.

I had the honor of speaking with Katrina Kell about "Chloé" for the Storytime in Paris podcast. Here is what I said:

Ep 72 - Katrina Kell, “Chloé”

My guest this week is award-winning author Katrina Kell. Katrina won an Australian Society of Authors Award Mentorship for “Chloé,” her novel released earlier this year. “Chloé” is an historical novel, inspired by the painting of the same name by Jules Lefebvre in 1875, which now lives in the bar of the Young and Jackson Hotel in Melbourne.

In her novel, Katrina explores the life of Marie, the woman who posed for the painting, and the mystery behind her supposed death. In our conversation, Katrina shares why she was drawn tto Marie, how she separated myth from history, how she balanced Parisian poetry with Australian jargon, and the dream that started ot alll.

Listen to the full interview here: https://bit.ly/4b54ZY4

A famous but enigmatic painting has hung in the Young and Jackson Hotel in Melbourne, Australia since 1909. It depicts a fully nude female, her raven hair upswept in an elegant chignon, her expression set in, perhaps, a defiant melancholy. What is her story?

This 1875 painting by Jules Joseph Lefebvre is called "Chloé". The woman represents the water naiad Chloé from French poet André Chénier's poem "Mnasyle et Chloé".

It's against this context that Katrina Kell sets her remarkable debut novel Chloé. Kell writes the novel in dual but related plotlines.

The first explores the story of Marie Peregrine, the young woman who served as Lefebvre's muse. In war-torn 1870s Paris, Marie comes from a rough background and struggles after her mother's death, eventually coming to the Académie Julian to work and learn. Here she befriends fellow artists and develops her talent. Marie's Communard past, however, haunts her every step.

The second reflects the painting's influence on an Irish-Australian family during World War I. In Australia, twins Paddy and Rory Byrne struggle after their father's untimely disappearance. The brothers join the war effort to support their asylum-bound mother, and, perhaps, to escape and begin a new adventure. An unfinished rosewood figure of Chloé travels with them. Will someone finish the figure? And how will they fare on the warfront?

Kell has created a sweeping and immensely vibrant novel that takes readers from a traumatized but deeply bohemian Paris on the cusp of its fin de siècle brilliance, the sea-whipped coasts of Australia, and the war-torn battlefields of Europe.

She imagines Chloé's story in a deeply evocative and sympathetic way, bringing to life a mysterious but unforgettable heroine. Readers will learn much about the Paris art scene and will even meet some familiar characters.

Thank you so much to Katrina and her publisher for a digital copy via @netgalley! Out now!

TW: references to suicide, sexual abuse

Thank you so much NetGalley and Echo Publishing for giving me an advanced reading copy in exchange for a review!

"’An artwork must stand alone, the model's identity...it really has nothing to do with it.’"

I would highly recommend that those who are interested in art history look into the mystery surrounding Lefebvre’s Chloé before diving into this book. I would especially recommend that you read Katrina Kell’s own essay on the history surrounding the painting, “Evanescence of an Artist’s Model: Jules Lefebvre’s Chloé": https://index-journal.org/issues/identity/evanescence-of-an-artist-s-model-by-katrina-kell. It is an extremely interesting read that speaks to the attention to detail and level of in-depth research that Kell conducted to inform her novel (though this was already obvious from the storytelling itself). To my delight, I stumbled upon her essay when I was a little more than halfway into the book. As I was reading, I was constantly coming across new information that I’d feel compelled to look more into on my own; I found myself stopping repeatedly in the middle of a page to look something up because Kell would include yet another interesting detail or reference that I wanted more insight on. As I was looking into the history of the painting, as well as background on the Paris Commune and WWI (which serve as the historical settings in the story’s split timeline), I got the sense that this must have been the kind of excitement that Kell felt while she was unraveling the dark shroud of mystery that has surrounded the model of Chloé for more than a century.

The mystery behind the painting is intriguing largely because there is so little information on the model herself, and what information we do have on her, sources seem unable to agree on the facts. Some say she was 17 when she posed for the painting, others say 19; some say she threw a “goodbye” party with her modeling money before committing suicide, others make no mention of such a party; Lefebvre himself suggested that she took her own life because of her involvement with a gang of dangerous, “lowly” communards, while others insist that it was due to unrequited love. (Kell pays homage to these conflicting accounts in one of my favorite scenes from the book.) We don’t even know the young woman’s identity. The only clue is a given name: Marie, a name Kell ultimately stuck with and gave to her protagonist.

This is how mythology starts: through oral tradition. Because there is seemingly no reliable documentation on who the model was, all we have to go by is hearsay. This is how myths and legends and fairy tales get immortalized with each successive generation, and that is how the mythologizing of Chloé largely flourished in the Young and Jackson Hotel bar where she has been displayed for more than a hundred years. As such, the model behind Chloé is less a flesh-and-blood woman and more an idea, a concept, an unattainable idea; most of all, a tragic heroine.

This is where Kell’s Chloé comes in. Within these pages, Marie is no longer a waifish water nymph perpetually waiting for her love to come to her; Kell turns Marie into a flesh-and-blood person. Marie feels so real and easy to empathize with as you’re reading, and from the book’s opening chapter, she immediately comes to life with her slightly rebellious free-thinking attitude. I instantly found her charming, and I have a feeling I’m going to be thinking about her—both Kell’s Marie, and the real Marie who lived and breathed—for a long time.

Because Marie was the character I was most invested in, I’m going to be focusing on her main timeline (1870s Paris) for this review, though be aware that the story occasionally jumps between this time period and WWI era Australia, where we follow two twin brothers who are captivated by the tales surrounding Chloé’s model. It’s with their story that the novel ultimately concludes, on a really touching note at that, but I don’t have nearly as much to say about them as I do about Marie’s storyline. I’ll get into my minor critiques before I move on to more significant ones.


Firstly, there were a lot of time skips—I don’t mean the back and forth timeline switches that I just mentioned (I actually quite appreciate that they were fairly limited!), but time skips within each individual timeline. I didn’t mind these in the WWI timeline, as this is Marie’s story and, despite enjoying the brothers’ side of things, Marie was where my primary interest lay. But the time skips were really frequent in Marie’s timeline, I’d argue too frequent, and it was a little disappointing for me when Marie’s posing sessions with both the Academie Julian students and Lefebvre himself were largely skipped over. I was really looking forward to reading about what the experience would be like for her, so you can imagine my surprise when, after her modeling gig at the Academie was secured, I turned the page to see the words “one week later” at the top of the next chapter.

On that note, these frequent “one week/two weeks later” time skips made it difficult for me to keep track of what month we were in at any given time. Reminders of the date, let alone general time of year, were infrequent, so every time a character indicated that months had passed since a certain event, I would be extremely confused, thinking that it had only been a few weeks at most. However, that could be my fault for not keeping track of how many weeks were passing!

Another problem this presented was pacing. I thought it was way too fast! And I say this as a compliment to Kell’s storytelling, because as I was getting more and more invested in Marie’s story, I kept wishing that we got to spend more time with her and to see the action, in general, a lot more fleshed out. There definitely were moments that could have used some slowing down to give the narrative not only a chance to breathe, but also an opportunity to build up some tension and drama. With all those time skips and fast pacing even in the moments that weren’t skipped over, it felt to me as if the story was breezing right past me, when all I wanted was for it to hold still so I could let myself sit in the moment for a while.

Speaking of fleshing things out, I also thought it was a missed opportunity not to further develop Marie’s friendships with Selena and Victorine Meurent, or Olympia as Marie calls her in reference to the infamous Manet painting she sat for. These are the only two women Marie establishes long-term relationships with when she’s older; the rest of her connections are with men, so I thought it was a shame that Marie rarely interacts with these two, especially considering she ends up living with Olympia for a time.

I remember being confused when Marie’s Uncle Emile (literally) dropped in and whisked her away to force her to live with him following the events of the Bloody Week. I thought, since when does she have an uncle? I had to go back and check if there was any mention of him before he randomly shows up, and I’m fairly certain that there is none. I would have preferred if his existence had at least been alluded to before then, especially seeing as he ends up becoming a significant antagonist (more on that later).

My last nitpick has to do with the physical setting. As I was reading, I certainly got the sense that Kell knows her way around Paris with how frequently she references real locations and even street names. While I find this really impressive, there wasn’t much in the way of actual descriptions of these locations, which would have been nice to see! I understand that not a lot of people like getting bogged down by setting description; they find it boring, and if it goes on too long, I often do too. Still, a little more detail would have been helpful when it came to visualizing things in my head.


The rest of my review is going to be more spoiler-heavy, so beware! My next critiques are more plot and character focused, and the first of these that I’ll discuss have to do with the romance subplot.

One of the reasons I found it disappointing is mostly personal preference, so take this with a grain of salt! But I personally felt just a little misled when, after all of those hints implying that Marie is queer (making references to Bonhuer, a sapphic artist; her preference for wearing masculine clothing; her noticing Selena’s curves; and that line about feeling “an exhilarating sense of freedom—her true self hidden behind Chènier’s words” after performing his romantic poem “Mnasyle et Chloé,” with her best friend playing as Chloé and Marie as Mnasyle—I mean come on!), Marie ends up in a straight relationship. I’m in no way accusing the author of misleading the reader (me) on purpose; this is more of a projection of my queer hopes. I’m also not suggesting this is strictly a “critique” or a negative thing (although I know I’m putting it in the critique section), but it’s just a personal let down that I think is worth mentioning. Of course, Marie could be bisexual, but there’s no confirmation of this in the narrative.

This personal disappointment was compounded by how lacking in development the romance was. I couldn't tell if this was on purpose and if it was supposed to be a sort of whirlwind, casual fling, but if it was meant to be sincere, I didn’t get particularly invested in it. I think this also ties in with the quick pacing, because if we’d gotten to spend more time watching Marie interact with her love interest, perhaps the romance could have felt less thin.

Another thing I found strange was that there was no buildup to her decision to have sex with him for the first time, despite it getting confirmed a few pages later (whereas previously it had only been implied; earlier confirmation would have been better in my opinion) that her uncle sexually abused her. Victims of sexual abuse can be affected in by their trauma in a variety of ways, and becoming sex averse is certainly not the default, but one would think that the first time a character has sex would kind of be a big deal in general. In my opinion, this would especially be the case for one with that kind of trauma!

My last points have to do with Marie as a character. I found myself wishing that she was a little more active; her decision to try to become an artist's model is only half her own, half forced upon her by Emile. Her being forced into this line of work was not what I had imagined in the story that the synopsis inspired in my head, as I’d been hoping that she would seek it out for herself. Even when she decides to use it as an opportunity to escape her abusive uncle, it’s just that: an escape, rather than a goal to actively work towards (not that she has to work very hard for it anyway). What’s more, Marie also doesn't come up with the idea to make a new life for herself towards the end of the story until it is suggested to her by VAN GOGH HIMSELF; nor does she use her modeling money, of which she has more than enough to both travel AND rent a room, until he puts this idea in her head. Instead, she chooses to continue sleeping in a cold, filthy tomb for weeks on end. I found that a bit confusing and hard to believe, especially because we’re never given an indication of why she’s saving her money or what she’s waiting for.

On a similar note, Marie endures a lot of hardship in the story, there’s no doubt about that. But any time she experiences an upswing in good fortune, it isn't exactly something she has to fight for—rather, it's usually something handed to her. Lefebvre immediately picks her out of several other pretty girls hoping to be artist’s models, despite them all being stunning and dressed a lot more expensively than she is; the art students unanimously vote for her despite many of them mocking for her boyish clothing and awkward attitude; Julian, the director of the Academie himself, gives her special treatment and not only stops her from leaving the audition when she feels that she can’t do it, but also says he’ll let her model with her clothes on despite not offering the same to other models who are uncomfortable posing nude; Olympia quickly offers her a place to stay despite not knowing Marie for long; and finally, literal VAN GOGH basically rescues her, lets her stay at his house, and gives her the idea to start a new life.

Furthermore, I found it a little hard to believe that drawing the human form “exceptionally well” comes so easily to Marie despite the fact that she’s had no formal training, and we only see her draw once before. She later mentions that her mother taught her, but we never see that on-page, and I don't think it's ever mentioned before she gives that as an explanation to the art students for why her art is so good. (If it was, I missed it, and that’s on me!) Still, it would have been nice to see her draw frequently throughout the course of the story so that it would make more sense for her to be as good as the other art students, even better than some of them, when they’re the ones who’ve been learning and paying for lessons all their lives and she has not.

(Something similar happens with Marie picking the lock to the tomb she sleeps in: she remembers her mom “sharing the trick” with her when they were escaping from their landlord. Her mother indeed mentions that she used to pick locks to sneak into sepulchers, but never actually shows Marie how to do it, because they end up leaving the cemetery before she can. So how did Marie learn how to do this? I wish this had been shown on-page, too.)


Even at the novel’s conclusion, Marie is still a bit of a mystery to us. There are a couple of lingering questions that are never totally answered, but I don’t think I mind it that way. Because another thing that makes Marie—both the real Marie and Kell’s character—so intriguing is that the possibilities for what became of her are endless.

The power dynamic between artist and muse is a subject that I’ve been both fascinated and troubled by. It’s a dynamic that’s not without power imbalance, especially when, historically, the role of the passive “muse” was largely relegated to that of the female artist’s model; and the role of the creator, who can bend her likeness to suit his vision as he wills, was accepted as belonging only to the male artist. And where power imbalance is present, there’s potential for abuse, especially in cases where the artist is the model’s employer, and possibly even her lover. (I don’t mean to feed into the notion that artist models typically provided “sexual favors” for their artists, but, historically, the pattern of artists entering relationships with their models is certainly there. The line between business and romantic relationships was certainly blurred among almost all the original pre-raphaelites, for example.) I don’t mean to suggest that artists who use models have a higher proclivity for literal abuse; rather, I’m referring to abuse in the sense that, in the process of feeding off of these muses for inspiration, the artist dehumanizes, however inadvertently, the object of his admiration.

This potential for abuse, both literal and metaphoric, is felt within the novel, even though Lefebvre’s character is almost perfectly respectful to Marie, except for a few fleeting moments where he has some less than savory thoughts. I appreciate Kell’s thoughtfulness in regards to this dynamic, where, especially in Marie’s case as a homeless and impoverished young woman, the artist model was often in a very vulnerable position.

We’re frequently reminded of the sense that Marie’s identity as a person is subsumed into her role as Lefebvre’s Chloé. Because so few people knew who the model was, the way she is spoken of in the rumors regarding her fate is as if people are talking about a character in a story rather than a real human being. In other words, she’s little more than an interesting tale to them. It makes me wonder if her repeated use of the name “Olympia” to refer to Victorine was deliberate on Kell’s part, a means of reminding us of the idea that it is ultimately the artist, not the model herself, who has a say on how the public perceives and remembers her.

I’m really glad that I got to read this and am grateful to the author for exposing me to a really compelling enigma in a corner of art history that I'd never heard before, despite my familiarity with Lefebvre's work. This was genuinely such a delight to read; I learned so much and derived so much joy from doing my own research alongside my reading experience. I can tell that the author put a lot of love and care into this story, and I don’t doubt that I’ll be thinking about it for a long time to come. I’m looking forward to seeing what Kell will write next!

I was really excited to read Chloé—a historical fiction novel based on the life of Marie, the unknown girl who was the model for Jules Joseph Lefebvre's Chloé. I didn't know much about the painting itself, but I tend to gravitate towards strongheaded women in my novels so I was intrigued.

Unfortunately, this wasn't the novel for me. I don't know if I would have been more captivated if I had known about the painting before or if I would have felt the same.

It's set in a dual timeline, which I usually tend to enjoy, but didn't quite love as much in this instance. While it's told from Marie's perspective in one section, it's then told from the point of view of two brothers who's father was enamored with Chloé. I really didn't get into the brother's section; while I understood what Kell was trying to accomplish, I kept waiting to get back to Marie's story. The last chapter of the brothers' section did a nice job of rounding everything out, but other than that, I didn't never got into the rest.

The writing itself was okay. I was never particularly moved by the prose, even though I felt like I should have been. I also felt like the pacing was a bit off—while we were covering a large expanse of time, there were moments where I wanted Kell to dig into the plot a little more, or I felt like we were dragging on a bit.

While I think there will be plenty of people who enjoy Chloé, I just don't think this was the right novel for me. I rounded up, but my true rating is 2.5 stars.