The Cleaner of Chartres: A Novel

“I often wonder if happiness isn’t knowing what should and should not be explained.”

“But how can we tell which is which?”

“Hmmm,” said the Abbe Paul. “That, I suppose, is wisdom”

Buried deep within Salley Vickers’ The Cleaner of Chartres, this exchange between her protagonist Agnes Morel and the village priest contains the beating heart of the novel.

Found abandoned in a basket that contained one sole hint of her parentage, The Cleaner of Chartres tracks Agnes’ journey from infancy to her fourth decade. Named by the kindly gentleman who was her rescuer for a saint and a fungus (the two natures of man are important to this story), Agnes faces challenges, both physical and emotional, that would floor many. Abandonment, rape, childbirth, servitude, illiteracy, poverty, scorn, fear—Agnes experiences them all.

It’s all a bit much for Ms. Vickers’ character to bear on her slight shoulders. Agnes’ obsession with a photograph of a labyrinth she encounters in childhood leads her to the site of the actual labyrinth in Chartres and informs the structure of this novel. The Cleaner of Chartres is told in a twisting manner, jumping from the past to the present in ever narrowing, looping passages until they meet at the apex of the story.

It’s rather a neat idea, in theory, but does not work well in practice. Character development, aside from that of Agnes, suffers from the truncations. There is never quite enough time to create a connection between reader and character, and as a result the characters remain ciphers, their motivations shallow and unclear.

Time jumps back and forth make tracking events problematic as well, especially when related in Ms. Vickers’ flowery and ultra-erudite language. This is most apparent in the first half of the novel—a reader will need either a very fine vocabulary or a dictionary at hand. Troublesome, too, is the time setting of the story. Until euros are mentioned in the mid chapters, the language, dress (Agnes is often mentioned as wearing a floor-length skirt), and manner of speech in the story strongly suggest a setting in the 19th or early 20th century.

There are two rather neat “reveals” near the end of the novel, both dependent upon and highlighted by the labyrinthine structure of the story, perhaps validating that choice. A perfunctory and thoroughly unbelievable romance in the last twenty pages spoils the effect, though. It’s disappointing to have what appears to be a clumsy afterthought appended onto a story that, at that point, seems to have been thoughtfully crafted.

The Cleaner of Chartres could fit a niche for a reader who enjoys a French setting and a smattering of the language. Agnes is a likable enough character, and her story is true to the labyrinth themed construction. Still, a more satisfying option would be one of Joanne Harris’ novels set in France.