Told from the point of view of a baker’s wife in Pont St Esprit, this is a fiction based on a series of events that took place in the late summer of 1951. As the author’s notes stipulate at the end of the story, there are many theories about what might have really happened. This book being a form of dramatisation of the author’s own thoughts. Of course, I couldn't let that go. I had to undertake the research.
Pont St Esprit is a small town in the département of Gard in southern France. Noted for its religious connections and its place on the route to Rome, it is an ancient crossing point for the Rhône and the bridge is mentioned in texts as early as the 14th century.
In August 1951 the town was struck with a sudden form of poisoning. The local surgeries were flooded with people that presented similar symptoms - nausea, vomiting and dramatic variations in body temperature. The symptoms worsened quite quickly and patients began experiencing convulsions, hallucinations and psychotic episodes.
Two local doctors investigated the cause of the problem and within a few days conclude that it must be the bread that was to blame from a particular bakery in Pont St Esprit. The local police became involved and undertook an investigation. A judge was appointed and arrests on the charge of involuntary manslaughter were made.
The conclusions reached were that the flour used for the bread had become contaminated with ergot - a fungal poison that can occur naturally in cereals, in particular rye. Under the Vichy government, the supply of flour was strictly controlled and rationed, which mean that a baker had no control over the quality of the flour he received or the amount. It was not unheard of to add other cereal grains to the flour. In addition, there were outbreaks of the same symptoms in neighbouring villages who were also supplied from the same source as Pont St Esprit. Although there have been other theories espoused since and some discredited, it seems likely that the cause of the mass poisoning was connected with the flour supply. The most interesting question for me relates to whether the infection in the flour was really naturally occurring or deliberately introduced. A further rider to that is, were there other hands at work maliciously? My research left me with no definitive answer but the impact on the populous was tragic as ergot has the same psychotic effect as LSD. A trawl of the newspapers from the 1960s in the UK and the USA will provide many examples of premature deaths caused by the fake beliefs induced by what is now a stringently controlled Class A drug.
With that as the backdrop, the novel reads uncomfortably. Told in retrospect, the narrator Elodie shows herself to be unreliable from the outset. Within the first two opening sentences, she poses the question ‘...why not tell it differently?’ She considers this possibility and finally declares that ‘perhaps it’s best to be honest, now.’ And there you have it, the one word that can undermine even the very best of intentions, ‘perhaps’.
As I was reading the text that one word kept popping back into my head. Is this the real story from Elodie's point of view? Could it be her imagined and preferred version of the history of the events or something more sinister from her poison-addled memory? Those three strands kept me glued to the page from the beginning to the end. I read the book virtually in one sitting.
I really enjoyed the presentation of the small rural community – and in 1951, with a population of just over 4,000 people, Pont St Esprit was a typical small, southern town that sat on the west bank of the Rhône. The petty rivalries between the ladies of the town and the dynamics between the various bakeries are all keenly observed. The relationship between Violet – the Ambassador’s wife and new to the town – and Elodie is especially well-drawn and at times painful to see being played out on the page.
Despite that, I
found it difficult to be empathetic to any of the characters. But, the story was so interesting, the
dynamics between the individuals so cleverly interwoven that my distance from
them didn’t seem to matter. It was a fascinating
read and an equally absorbing piece of research once I had finished the book.
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