The Hour of Parade, published November 2013.
What’s the book’s first line?
“The bells rang one o’clock, the end of parade—a time when soldiers are at liberty, disappointed that there’s been no news to break their boredom.”
What’s the book about?
One violent act draws together three very different people in The Hour of Parade.
It is 1806, and Russian cavalry officer Alexi Ruzhensky journeys to Munich to kill the man who killed his brother in a duel, French officer Louis Valsin.
Obsessed by the main character in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s novel Julie, Ruzhensky becomes entangled with a passionate young woman before finally stumbling across Valsin and his lover.
Alexi, hiding his true identity, befriends the pair and consequently finds that he has no thirst for blood.
But as the novel comes to its explosive conclusion, Ruzhensky will learn that revenge cannot be forgotten so easily.
What inspired you write the book?
For a long time, I’d enjoyed reading fiction set in the Napoleonic Era—Patrick O’Brien, Tolstoy, and Stendahl—and I wanted to write my own novel set in this time, a novel about ordinary men and women struggling to live their everyday lives while caught up in large, impersonal forces—which is a really a contemporary theme.
What’s the most distinctive thing about the main character? Who does he/she remind you of?
In my mind, there are two main characters, Alexi Ruzhensky and Anne-Marie Froelich. Alexi is probably most distinctive because of his obsession with a book and its main character, Rousseau’s Julie.
Anne-Marie is distinctive because she dresses as a man and fights as a soldier, and then returns to a more conventional life as Valsin’s lover.
Both characters have a touch of me in them, but neither was based on anyone.
What’s the main reason to read the book?
The Hour of Parade has been praised for relying on the reader’s intelligence. It doesn’t explain much; it shows the characters in the story and asks the reader to make meaning of them. There’s a focus on language and metaphoric imagery. If you like those things, the book will please you.