New Book Alert: Canvas of Time by Amelie Pimont; Haunting and Beautiful Romance About Reincarnation and Love Lasting Over Time

 

New Book Alert: Canvas of Time by Amelie Pimont; Haunting and Beautiful Romance About Reincarnation and Love Lasting Over Time

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas is one of the best thought provoking novels about reincarnation. In it, six separate stories from different genres are brought together by the idea that the six protagonists are the same person reincarnated over the centuries. The character changes genders, ethnicities, skin color, and sexualities but inside they are the same person having the same thoughts, similar goals, and motives revealing that the body is just the cover for the eternal soul underneath. It is a transformative novel that stays with the Reader long after the book is closed.

Amelie Pimont's novel Canvas of Time is a similar work. It is not as complex or invites deep thought the way Cloud Atlas does, but it is a haunting love story which involves a pair of lovers who get acquainted, fall in love, are separated by cruel circumstances, only to meet again the next life. It's much simpler than Cloud Atlas but is every bit as beautiful and unforgettable.

The two lovers that we meet are Eli and Sarah (same names every time) and we encounter them in Ancient Egypt, 20th century France between the World Wars, modern 21st century  California, and a futuristic spaceship. The landscapes are almost dream-like yet precise in their details. 

The fairy tale aspects of the princess and the commoner trope are explored beautifully in the Egyptian segments as spoiled Princess Sarah flirts with slave Eli, then he defends her against an avenging army. It is a strange attraction of opposites as the two see each other beyond the wide economic gulf that separates them. Then just when you think it will turn out well for them, it turns into a Shakespearean tragedy.

While the Egyptian section captures the romantic fairy tale aspects of "long ago and far away," the French section captures the minutiae of everyday life along with the stress and sacrifice of living during war time. Unlike the Egyptian segments, the events are rooted in actual history. Eli and Sarah are born into two separate farming families that are close friends and live in an almost communal existence. Through Eli and Sarah's youth, we see the children study the facets of agriculture like milking cows, building efficient machinery to help with the farming, selling their wares to the market and so on. Then every night, the two families gather together for storytelling. It's a pleasant nostalgic atmosphere. 

When World War I begins, it is an explosion that destroys the peaceful existence that occurred previously. In some very traumatic chapters, German soldiers use their family farm as a base and force the families to work for them. The constant abuse, sexual assault, malnutrition from rationing, and physical and emotional stress takes its toll on both families to the point that Eli and Sarah lose family members. The losses bring them closer together. The years between the wars are a welcome normalcy as Eli and Sarah explore their fire forged romantic feelings into a marriage and parenthood before reality slaps them in the face again with another World War.

The segment set in modern America takes on the themes of magical realism by featuring dreams, psychic connections, automatic art, and fantastic coincidences suggesting that Eli and Sarah live a fated existence that propels them to their destiny. In this reality, Sarah is a photographer who is on assignment to take pictures of orphaned and abandoned children. She even develops a maternal bond with one of the young girls that she photographs. Meanwhile, Eli is an artist who paints pictures of a woman whom he has only seen in his dreams and scenes of his past lives.

There are some magical scenes in this segment such as when Sarah has visions of Eli in this study painting and the two have a telepathic conversation and get to know each other before they meet face to face. The book plays out as though their previous lives were building up to this moment when they finally meet in the present.

By far the best part is the science fiction story because it not only develops our lovers but the situation that they are in and why they fight so hard to be together. In this version, Sarah is one of the few survivors of a planet that has been destroyed by an environmental disaster. The residents of the ship want to take them to their home planet but first  they are given rigorous physical training, a list of rules that must be obeyed, and are made the test subjects of  some strange experiments in the med bay. Before they arrive on their planet, they pick up Eli who has been stranded and has learned to adapt on his planet. Of course, Sarah and Eli fall in love once more.

Eli and Sarah's romance is augmented by the science fiction setting in which a conspiracy is revealed causing them to question the others around them, even one another. We also see the results of making a personal sacrifice for those you care about and how it leaves its mark on generations to come.

Cloud Atlas is more of a thinking person's reincarnation novel. Mitchell does some tricks with the narrative like splitting the stories in half and having characters ask questions in one lifetime that are answered in another. Some things are inferred like whether other characters around the protagonists also shared past lives with them but nothing is ever outright stated leading the Reader to figure things out.

Canvas of Time on the other hand is more straightforward, the feeling person's reincarnation novel. The stories are split in a specific order with beginning, middle, and end. There are call backs and call forwards to former and future lives. In one lifetime, Eli gets violently stabbed, so in another he develops a fear of knives. In the present, Sarah visits the farm in France where she and Eli lived in that time period and recognizes it. 

Even characters reappear and play similar roles throughout the lovers' many lives. A female friend of Sarah exists as a fellow refuge, a slave, a village girl, and her sister in separate lives. A little girl attaches herself to the lovers in various lives sometimes as a sister,  daughter, or a young girl whom Eli or Sarah bonds with. A severe villainous character switches uniforms, ranks, careers, and even gender once but can't hide their true cruel despotic nature underneath. These echoes carry throughout Sarah and Eli's journey as a cycle that exists through time.

Canvas of Time is not only a remarkable fantastic love story but it is one that reminds us that love can exist throughout time and sometimes death is just another journey to a new life, adventure,and love.