Black Water Lilies

 
Black Water Lilies
by Frederick Duval
art by Didier Cassegrain
translated by Edward Gauvin

adapted from the novel by Michel Bussi
Magnetic Press
2011, adapted 2022

 

 

Black Water Lilies is a graphic novel retelling of a 2011 novel by the same name. Bussi wrote the original, Duval adapted the text, Cassegrain supplied the beautiful watercolor imagery that makes the whole book look like a Monet painting come to life.

 
Black Water Lilies is also a murder mystery that takes place in Giverny, the village where Monet settled, built his gardens, and did a lot of his most famous paintings. The story focuses on an 11 year-old girl, the beautiful village school teacher who instructs the 11 year-olds, and an old woman in black, who narrates the story. A man has been killed inside the famous gardens, and police from Paris are called in to investigate. The woman in black begins the story by locating it very precisely in time, during an annual Monet festival in 2010, when the gardens are open to the public. She tells us from the start that the story begins with one murder and will end with another.

 
The old woman mostly wanders the village and observes. She is newly widowed, and secretly owns the 'Black Water Lilies,' the apocryphal last painting Monet made, all in black, just before he died. I spent nearly the entire book wondering if she was the murderer, and if so, why?

 
The little girl, Fannette, has a talent for painting and hopes to win an annual worldwide children's art contest, so she can go study abroad. Several of her classmates have crushes on her - one she loves back, another grows increasingly jealous. She also has a secret tutor, an old man who helps her improve her technique, until he is murdered too, and his body vanishes, with Fannette seemingly the only one who knows.

 
The teacher, Stephanie, has a jealous husband who is suspected of the murder. One of the Paris police officers is obviously smitten with her, which compromises the investigation. But Stephanie loves him back, and wants to leave her husband for him.

 
The dead man was known to have several affairs, and someone sends the police photos of him with other women, including Stephanie. Some of the photos are explicit, others seem benign except for the context. He had a note on his body that seems to imply he secretly had an 11-year old child with one of his mistresses. So who is the child, and who is the mother? Is this why he was killed? The dead man also dreamed of owning an original Monet, something he could never afford at a fair price, so could that be the reason instead?

 
For two weeks, the police bumble around without fully solving anything. In the end, the old woman explains who committed the murders, and in doing so, reveals several truths that lingered just out of focus at the periphery of the story the entire time. 

 
The whole book was excitingly tense, both because you knew another death was coming, and even moreso because you cared what would happen to the girl, the teacher, and the crone. The ending is incredibly well-executed and makes the entire book better in retrospect. I immediately began flipping back through to consider things anew. I highly recommend this one! It was an excellent choice for the last book I'll finish this year.