The Heart is a Burial Ground

A book about mothers and daughters, their relationships and the impact this has on their future. In the wake of WW1, Caresse leaves Boston USA, with her daughter Diana, to live in 1920s Paris, throwing herself into the bohemian and somewhat frantic Jazz age, flapper lifestyle. With the loose morals of the era and the desperate pursuit of the next thrill, Caresse’s behaviour and that of the friends who surround her, has a huge impact on her young daughter. Diana’s choices in life and a constant stream of men go on to be reflected in the lives of her daughters. Set in 1930s Paris, 1970s Ibiza and 1990s Alderney, the book flits from one era to the next and back again, as the women’s lives and events unfold. A fascinating story of love, jealousy, desire and the emotional strain this can place on the maternal relationship.

What can a daughter learn from her mother? Four generations of women of one family suffer from their respective mother’s way of life, the choices they made and the future they planned for their kids. The first generation is embodied by Caresse Crosby, Harry Crosby’s wife, a young American who freed herself from Puritan Bostonian convictions and was looking for freedom and a life for the arts in Europe. Her daughter Diana grows up in Paris between all the famous people of the so called “Lost Generation” and never had to chance to just be a girl, too much was projected in her. Diana’s daughters Elena and Leonie found ways of opposing their mother by opting for very traditional models of love and life. Elena’s young children, one even unborn, are now the fourth generation who grows up with a heavy legacy.

The novel oscillates between times and places. We meet the Parisian It-crowd of the twenties when Caresse and Harry have their big time and Diana is just a girl. Then we jump to Caresse’s last days in Italy, decades after she has lost her husband and when her grand-daughters are already grown-up women. Another 20 years on, Diana’s life is coming to an end. Yet, no matter what point in time in general or in the characters’ life, the core question is always the same: what do you expect from life and how much love do you need?

Alternating the setting surely makes the novel lively, on the other hand, the development of the characters suffers from this non-linear or non-chronological arrangement. Even though you can make out especially Diana’s development, her daughters, for example, remained a bit a mystery for me. What I found intriguing, however, was the highly complex mother-daughter relationship which becomes very clear in every constellation: on the one hand, unconditional love and the hope that the daughter can break away from conventions and find love and happiness in life, on the other hand, the fact that they cannot live up to their own ideals and that wishes are not fulfilled makes them also reproachful and mean in their later life.

It is quite interesting to see that the author Tamara Colchester herself is a descendant of this family. This raises the question of how much fiction and how much reality you can find in the text. No matter the answer, it’s a novel about strong women and the choices we make in our lives.

The mother-daughter relationship may be a trope which is revisited time and time again, as is the shadow of a matriarch who looms large over those who follow in her footsteps. In her debut novel, Tamara Colchester manages to breathe new life into both.

As a descendant of legendary artistic patron and hedonist Caresse Crosby, Colchester deftly weaves her own knowledge into an entirely original and distinctive story.

Much has been written about Caresse (not least as a self-styled innovator of the modern bra) but more so in relation to the hedonistic , bohemian and somewhat promiscuous lifestyle she experienced alongside her second husband, Harry. Harry himself enjoyed excess in all aspects of life- ‘Harry has an unusual heart,’ Caresse observes at one point; ‘he likes to fill it with different people.’

Whilst Caresse is undoubtedly at the heart of this story, the character development is so deftly handled that there is no risk of the other women feeling like mere supporting characters.

This is a bold, striking and confident novel filled with vivid, sometimes shocking, scenes (Harry and Caresse going out to dinner just as Diana is brought home after taking an overdose, the way in which Diana speaks to her granddaughter Bay, not to mention a jaw-dropping incident at a dinner party.) It spans decades, generations and continents without ever feeling disjointed.

This is a stunning introduction to an intriguing new voice in British fiction, who does real justice to her prodigious forebear.