The Woman in the Wallpaper by Lora Jones

Paris, 1789. The Oberst Factory, which crafts exquisite wallpaper for the most fashionable French homes, is a place shrouded in mystery. Most enigmatic is the woman pictured in each of its prints, rumoured to be the late Mrs Oberst, who died in peculiar circumstances.

When sisters Lara and Sofi arrive there for work, they quickly form a friendship with Josef Oberst, the motherless heir to the factory. Whilst Sofi’s political fervour intensifies, Lara is disturbed by the uncanny way her life appears mirrored in the wallpaper. Meanwhile Hortense, Josef’s spoilt aristocratic wife, is similarly unnerved by the scenes that line the walls of her new home. With the mobs growing ever more violent, is she in danger of meeting the same untimely end as the last Mrs Oberst?

As revolution blazes across France, the lives of Sofi, Lara and Hortense are set to collide in unimaginable and irrevocable ways. Can they change what lies ahead, or are some patterns destined to be repeated?

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Lara and Sofi are sisters with only a year between them.  Living in Marseille with their parents, their lives are turned upside down when their father dies in tragic circumstances.  No longer able to pay their rent, they are forced to leave their house, and they travel north with their mother to Jouy-en-Josas near Paris where their aunt has managed to secure work for all of them at the Oberst Factory – positions that fortunately come with a small residence.  There, they attempt to settle into their new lives, desperately missing their father, and both independently developing an attachment to Josef Oberst, heir to the factory.    

The novel is told from the perspectives of Lara, Sofi, and Hortense – a young aristocratic woman.  I found the characters largely unlikeable although they have all suffered in their own way which does at least make them sympathetic.  Lara is the calm and quiet one – intelligent and artistic, she prefers the path of least resistance, but I found her too docile and compliant – even when things go awry (and they do go awry) she was too accepting of her fate.  Sofi is the complete opposite in temperament – she is quick to anger, particularly when she feels that she or Lara are being treated unfairly.  I think that where I struggled is that there wasn’t much nuance.  Lara is always calm and accepting of her circumstances – she might not be happy about it, but she just gets on with it – while Sofi is always raging against something. 

Hortense’s perspective is quite different.  She has a very privileged life, and comes across as a spoilt brat – making people wait unnecessarily on her behalf, and always rude and demanding.  Hortense is of a marriageable age, and yet is considered difficult even amongst her fellow aristocrats, with no one willing to take her as a wife (or daughter-in-law, given most marriages were arranged by the parents) despite the impressive dowry that she comes with.  It’s revealed in the blurb that she and Josef marry, despite neither of them wanting to, particularly Hortense who sees Josef as beneath her and her circumstances much reduced as a result.  Hortense’s behaviour is gradually explained, but I found it difficult to feel sympathetically towards her given her actions and she feels like a caricature for much of the novel. 

I was immediately attracted to the blurb of this novel when I was invited to read it via Netgalley, and particularly the mystery surrounding the titular woman in the wallpaper who the reader soon discovers to be Josef’s late mother.  This adds an element of eeriness to the novel, although it does at first seem like a coincidence as Lara bears a resemblance to the woman.  It takes on more significance as Lara repeatedly sees vignettes from her own life mirrored in scenes from the wallpaper and I enjoyed seeing that element of the plot play out – it went in a direction that I wasn’t expecting.  Similarly, the broader plot is very well done – I enjoyed seeing these three characters brought together, and if there were elements to the ending that I personally didn’t like, the journey there was a fascinating one.

The novel is set against the backdrop of the French Revolution, and while both sisters attend rallies and the storming of the Bastille, Lara seems largely ambivalent about it.  For Sofi, however, it becomes something to latch on to, fuelling her anger over the death of their father.  I like the way in which this was brought into the narrative, particularly as Jones highlights that while the intention was for a fairer society, it didn’t significantly benefit women who continued to be denied suffrage, property rights, and who were banned from political meetings.  It’s easy to forget that fraternity traditionally meant a brotherhood, but I think that it was meant in that sense in the slogan Liberté, égalité, fraternité. 

The Woman in the Wallpaper is a novel that I think that many readers will enjoy but unfortunately this one just didn’t work for me.  This is a case of it’s me not the book, however, and I think that lovers of historical fiction will enjoy it.

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The Woman in the Wallpaper will be published by Sphere on 20 February in physical, digital, and audio formats.  Huge thanks to the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this novel ahead of publication via Netgalley.

Disclaimer – I received a copy of this novel from the publisher. This has in no way influenced my review.