Book of a lifetime: The Chateau by William Maxwell

From The Independent archive: Salley Vickers follows Americans abroad

Love without sentimentality is realised in Maxwell’s poignant tome (Getty)

Reading The Chateau is like meeting a very old friend with whom the conversation is always spontaneous, intimate, restorative and unpredictable. The narrative line is simplicity itself: Harold and Barbara Rhodes, a young American couple, decide to take a long vacation in post-war Europe. While we are told that they visit other countries, the action takes place in France, most centrally, though not exclusively, in the chateau where they spend two uncomfortable weeks as paying guests.

This augurs Henry Jamesian themes but Maxwell’s is quite another key, no less profound for being apparently lighter. One element of this book which I admire is that the couple are happy together. They have sadnesses – they are childless – but they love each other and this is realised without sentimentality, a feat hard to pull off. There are dramas, little and large, but no secrets from each other except – and this is Maxwell’s special perception – in the ways human beings are ineluctably, and tragically, opaque even when the will to openness is paramount.