The Inheritors
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3.8 • 13 Ratings
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
An unforgettable new novel by the award-winning author of the international French bestseller The Godmother.
She had been dead now for four days and I had become rich. Unimaginably rich.
Blanche de Rigny has always considered herself the black sheep of the family. And a black sheep on crutches at that. But it turns out her family tree has branches she didn’t even know existed. And many of them are rotten to the core. As Blanche learns more about the legacy left by her wealthy Parisian ancestors, she decides a little family tree pruning might be in order.
But great wealth also brings great responsibility – a form of richesse oblige, perhaps – and Blanche has a plan to use her inheritance to cure the world of its ills.
Spanning two centuries, from Paris on the eve of the Franco-Prussian War to the modern day, this unforgettable family saga lays bare the persistent and poisonous injustice of inequality. In her trademark razor-sharp style, Hannelore Cayre again delivers the sardonic humour and devilish creativity that made The Godmother an international bestseller.
Hannelore Cayre is a French writer, director and criminal lawyer. Her most recent work, The Godmother, won the European Crime Fiction Prize, the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière and the Crime Writers’ Association Crime in Translation Dagger award. The Godmother was also featured on The New York Times’ ‘100 Notable Books of 2019’ list and has been made into a major film starring Isabelle Huppert.
‘A tightly plotted and darkly funny tale of trade in human bodies and souls.’ — Kerryn Goldsworthy, The Age
‘The darkly gripping story of a tainted family legacy’ — Readings
‘Richesse Oblige [The Inheritors] has everything we love about [Hannelore Cayre]; damaged but memorable characters, sharp language, ferocious humour, an undercurrent of political rage, a punchy narrative and lashings of subversion.’ —Lire literary magazine
Customer Reviews
French connection
The author is a French criminal lawyer, film director and writer, best known for her multi-award winning 2017 novel The Godmother (La Daronne), which got 4.5 stars from me and was adapted subsequently for the big screen as Mama Weed (2020).
Blanche, the protagonist here, is a middle aged single mother of modest means but considerable ingenuity, who has been dependent on crutches for mobility since suffering spinal and pelvic injuries as a passenger in a car accident when still in her late teens. (One of her contemporaries was driving.) She hails from a small island off the coast of Brittany (France, not Higgins), but her surname does not. When a wealthy heiress of the same name dies, our gal thinks there might be money in it for her.
The narrative unfolds in alternating chapters between the 1870s, where a rich young man buys his way out of being conscripted for the Franco-Prussian war, and the present day where our gal and her bestie in the lower ranks of the civil service take advantage of France’s peculiar inheritance laws to do some gold digging. Like The Godmother, Blanche has ambiguous morals, but most other characters are worse.
The cool, detached prose suited the quintessentially French social satire. The history lesson was interesting, although I think the author should have ditched the 1870s time line for the second half. It had served its purpose by then, and drew attention away from more interesting contemporary developments.