[I am reading this 2011 novel in its parts, writing about each one before reading on. So far I have read the first part. Spoiler alert: If you read this running commentary, you will find out everything that happens in the book as I read it.]
3 March 2026
First, Chapters 1-13
For some reason I’m reading another historical novel. OK, it was recommended to me, and I chose it for a book group without knowing what it was about. I always worry that historical novels might be no more than time tourism, with our paid guide pointing out the sights and sounds—and, in this novel, the appalling smells—that make the past such a foreign country. And what will my book group make of it? As (almost) always these days—by which I mean these recent decades—we get an uncensored version of history, with the nasty bits left in. The state of the cemetery surrounding Les Innocents in Paris in the 1780s, the stink of it that penetrates inside the houses in the surrounding streets, even into the clothes and breath of the people living there… and the erection a young man discovers when he undresses, which he’s perfectly comfortable with until there’s an unexpected knock at the door.
Do I always start any commentary on a historical novel like this? I’m not going to check now, and besides, it isn’t what matters. Does Miller build a convincing world? Is the first quarter or so of the novel engaging? Are the characters? I’d say, so far, yes. Jean-Baptiste Baratte, in the city for the first time, has the unenviable task of organising and supervising the complete clearance of the cemetery and the demolition of the church. Not so much a poison chalice for the ambitious young engineer—the minister is keen to leave a subordinate to oversee our man—but a poison cesspit. He has a fine new suit in the most modern style, bought during a drunken excursion with the organist, and we wonder how long it will survive untainted. His lodgings are near the cemetery, and people’s clothes, like everything else, stink of death.
Ah, death. It isn’t a background hum or an occasional grace-note, it’s the fabric of this place. I can’t help being reminded of Zola at his most grisly. Never mind the churchyard, almost entirely composed of human remains. We’ve already witnessed, slightly offstage, the beheading of a chicken in preparation for the pot, and the meal an old friend in a mining town he visits is a sliced calf’s head: ‘it tastes, poor thing, as though pickled in its own tears.’ So, a world of gritty realities, ever-so-slightly relieved by Jean-Baptiste’s own wry perceptions. It’s his point of view we’re usually getting, but not always. Miller is happy to have us peek inside that of another character, like Marie the maid in the room above his at his lodgings, watching through a knot-hole in her floor. The detail is a part of this world, in which close proximity is a constant reminder of a particular aspect of the human condition. Jean-Baptiste contemplates it, helped along by Miller’s dry observations:
‘Is the life of the body the true life? The mind nothing but a freakish light, like the St Elmo’s fire sailors see circling the tips of their masts in mid-Atlantic? He is savouring this little pensée (in which he does not believe at all), holding his cock like a pen he might use to note it down with—’
—when the knock comes. It’s Marie, as it happens, but we don’t know about the knot-hole yet. As he contemplates her young form—he always looks at women and girls like this—he has to hide the state he’s in, and can’t possibly stand to speak. This is the life of the body indeed.
Women and girls. Aside from Marie, there are two in the lodgings assigned to him, Mrs Monnard and the Monnards’s strangely sequestered daughter Ziguette. There’s something Dickensian about the family, but Miller doesn’t inflict Dickens’s male gaze on his readers. He can bring other senses into play—regrettably, mainly smell. And there can be another kind of proximity, where that life of the body really comes into play. When he goes to Armand’s lodgings one evening, Miller can describe the organist’s relationship with the widowed landlady—he’s told Jean-Baptiste all about it—as openly as Zola would. But definitely not Dickens. People live in their own bodies in this novel, and are always aware of everybody else’s. Jean-Baptiste meets Héloïse on the street after seeing Armand and his political friends. ‘He lifts a hand and touches her cheek. She does not flinch. “You are not frightened of me?” he asks. “No,” she says. “Should I be?” “No. There is no reason.” His fingers rest on her skin. He could not say what he is doing, what he is guided by, he whose experience with women is so little. Is it her being a whore that lets him do it? But in this unlooked-for hour, words like whore, like engineer, like Héloïse or Jean-Baptiste, are empty as blown eggs.’ Words, eh? Overrated.
It goes with Jean-Baptiste’s ‘philosophical’ turn of mind, Rationalist and, as we’ve seen, unwilling to relegate the body to some lower order of consideration. His ‘catechism’ is individualist, and he recites it (not always convincing himself) every night. ‘Who are you? I am Jean-Baptiste Baratte. Where are you from? From Bellême in Normandy. What are you? An engineer, trained at the Ecole des Ponts. What do you believe in? In the power of reason…’ He has no religious or sentimental qualms about clearing les Innocents, although he has been advised to keep the truth to himself until the work starts. He’s sensible enough to understand why. Before Chapter 13 he’s only told his new friend, the organist Armand, and nobody else. He knows it will be contentious—but he doesn’t know he’s in a novel. I’m sure the reader expects far worse trouble than he does.
I ought to go back to the beginning. We first see Jean-Baptiste inside the Versailles Palace, being given the brief he’s been appointed for by the minister. We don’t know the date yet, but the place is already slackly run, with random courtiers lounging in corridors. We only hear derogatory references to the Austrian queen later, and it’s the tailor who mentions that it’s 1785. In other words, it’s pre-Revolutionary France and, it turns out later, Armand is in a group that goes out on drunken night-time jaunts to deface state proclamations. Are they in a serious cadre? Is their ‘modern’ thinking just a fashion, as it is for the tailor? (With heavy dramatic irony—thanks, Andrew Miller—he tells Jean-Baptiste his pistachio-green silk suit will be even more fashionable in 1795 than it is now.) I’ll come back to Jean-Baptiste’s own modern thinking later, when Miller does.
He finds his lodgings, meets the Monnards and the all-pervading cemetery taint and, in his cold room on the same floor as Ziguette’s, finds himself thinking not about her but about the bed’s previous occupant, a musician. Next day—cue J-B’s attempts to get used to the smell, seeking occasional relief with a perfumed handkerchief—he’s examining the church organ. It might be worth saving, he thinks… and suddenly the organist appears and starts to practise. There’s only the sound of the pedals and keys clattering, and they get talking. Cue a visit to a bar, using some of the minister’s money, then for lunch and a lot more to drink then, as though Armand has ambushed him, J-B finds himself at the tailors. He leaves two hours later in the green suit and a ‘banyan’ robe, later regretting he’s left his old suit with the tailor to sell on. It’s October, and the new one won’t be suitable for the winter. And he’s paid far more than he can afford.
Are alarm bells ringing? He’s sensible enough not to waste another day like that, and gets on with his measuring. Jeanne, the young grand-daughter of the sexton, shows him around the churchyard, crypts and ‘charnels’, where burials ended only five years ago. But she can’t know how deep the pits and other graves actually go, and Jean-Baptiste has to estimate. He knows the paupers’ graves are deep, and high…. He makes a plan of what work needs doing and how many men and horses he will need—and is reminded by Lafosse, his immediate boss, that ‘every sou needs to be accounted for.’ And Jeanne’s chatter has made him remember that these remains are human, the relatives of the living. Hmm.
Meanwhile, over the course of not many days, he’s getting to know the place better. Armand assures him the Monnards would love to get their daughter married off to the eligible engineer—musicians are no better than actors to them, he says, so he was safe—and they agree it would be like marrying the cemetery. He sees Héloïse, the Austrian woman, who makes a living selling her body. He is stirred by that chance encounter with her after the drunken defacement spree he’s spent with Armand and his friends with their silly noms-de-guerre. (J-B is ‘Beche’ now, in honour of his trade.) Had it not been for his having to rise early for his trip to Valenciennes to recruit miners for the work, he might have taken Héloïse home.
He knows about the mines at Valenciennes because he worked there with Lecoeur, a man who became his friend. They spent a lot of their free time imagining the Enlightenment utopia ‘Valenciana’ together, a nod to the philosophy that was leading more serious minds than theirs or Armand’s to consider their next moves. J-B has written to him and received a reply—and is shocked by Lecoeur’s appearance after only three years. And his drinking appals him—alcoholism isn’t an 18th Century concept, but that’s what Jean-Baptise sees in his old friend. And near-malnutrition. He’s already considered him as the overseer to supervise men he knows— Lecoeur has talked him through his list of suitable workers—and feels he’s ’saved a man’s life’ by offering him the job. Lecoeur is ecstatic he will soon be leaving the hell-hole of the mines.
This first part ends when Jean-Baptise is back at les Innocents. He is talking to Jeanne, the girl who first showed him the layout of the cemetery, and Armand is with them. He already knows about the minister’s plan to raze it all, and teases Jean-Baptiste into telling her. She takes it calmly, but he can’t help making her promises about her future which, Armand reminds him, he can’t possibly keep. He also teases him about Jeanne as a possible bed-mate—‘our beloved queen was wed at fourteen’—and Ziguette. Armand is a cynic, and admits he would have Ziguette if there were no strings—and tells Jean-Baptiste that so would he. And then Héloïse passes by, carrying books—I didn’t mention that there’s more to her than her night job—and Armand notices a certain look that passes between them. ‘Oh, no. Not her as well?’ And he starts to laugh.
Enough? Before I go I’ll mention an interesting little interlude at the end of Chapter 8. Following a star symbol to mark a new section, Miller lets us into the night-time worlds of five different characters, their thoughts and dreams. There’s Marie, looking down at the engineer, ‘the foreigner’, and what appear to be his troubled dreams. There’s Armand in bed with the willing landlady. ‘To the west’ there’s Héloïse and Young Werther. There’s Père Colbert, the possibly half-crazed redundant priest and his obsessive musings on the devil and his servants, who he expects to encounter at any moment. And there is Jeanne, lying in a little bed at the feet of her grandfather’s, now that he considers her too womanly to be sleeping next tom him. She hates the idea and still misses the closeness.
If I think of anything else I’ll let you know.
We can read it for you wholesale 