Chloé

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!