Book Review: Love and Death in the War of the Roses ; the Rose Grower by Michelle De Kretser Chatto Pounds 10

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The Rose Grower is a meditative tale of unrequited love and changing identity set against a backdrop of the first five years of the French Revolution as it progresses from scattered disturbance to the storming of the Bastille and full-scale totalitarian regime. In focusing her attention on one particular family of impoverished aristocratic stock, the Saint- Pierres of Montsignac, Gascony, Michelle de Kretser shows an acute understanding of the way in which the nobility viewed the sudden but systematic eradication of their entire privileged existence with a mixture of naive complacency and disbelief. As the obnoxious Hubert assures his wife Claire: "None of this will last, you'll …