The Cleaner of Chartres, by Salley Vickers
Agnès Morel appeared overnight on the doorstep of Notre Dame Cathedral. No one in the surrounding town knows who she is - she has no relatives, no money, no home, and her past is untraceable. But Agnès is diligent, helpful, and above all, kind - and here in Chartres she is building a new life. 'The Cleaner of Chartres' follows this elusive but good-hearted woman as she quietly touches the lives of everyone around the cathedral. It's a beautiful exploration of relationships, and a moving reflection on how our smallest actions impact other people, for good and ill. I really enjoyed it.
'The Cleaner of Chartres' is a character-driven book. If you're looking for action-packed adventure on a grand scale, this is not where you'll find it: the tension and drama in this novel arises purely from the interactions between its people. Vickers's cast is brilliant. The community she weaves is fantastically diverse, including a bumbling professor, a still-life painter, a rough-and-ready handyman, two middle-aged gossips, some nuns, and a priest having an existential crisis. These characters were by turns hilarious, infuriating, fascinating and endearing, but what struck me most of all was their believability. Vickers knows what people are like, and every thought, decision, and conversation between these pages is utterly convincing.
The mechanism that allows Vickers to bring together such a varied group of characters is, of course, the cathedral. Everyone is linked to it in some way. The Abbés Bernard and Paul minister in it, Agnès cleans it, Alain is restoring its ceiling, Madame Beck simply lives in the flat that overlooks it. All of these people from different walks of life and strata of society are connected by Notre Dame - it's the epicentre of the novel. I found this really beautiful: cathedrals are places where different paths intersect, and I love how Vickers has built a novel around this. The book feels observant, authentic, thoughtful.
Naturally, the cathedral setting of 'The Cleaner of Chartres' invited some questions around faith. True to real life, those who interact with the cathedral hold a host of different beliefs: some are lifelong worshippers, some are unsure what they believe, and there are others who have nothing to do with any of it. What interested me was how Vickers used these differences to explore how faith could be found in multiple ways. It wasn't actually the case that the clergy were the firmest in their Christianity - one priest is grappling with doubt, another simply going through the motions, and the nuns are so blinded by dogma that they become heartless, even cruel. It's the pagan Alain who finds awe and beauty in the cathedral's stained glass, the searching Agnès who finds solace in the statue of the Virgin Mary. These two unlikely worshippers find a different kind of hope within the cathedral walls. Vickers is critiquing religion but not faith - the priests' heartless ritual pales beside the cleaner's quiet hope. I thought this was rather beautiful.
Another thing I loved about 'The Cleaner of Chartres' was its humour. The prose sparkles from start to finish; Vickers has a wonderful wit, and you feel as though she has written everything with a wry gleam in her eye. But although in this sense the book was very light-hearted, it also carried great emotional weight. Agnès faces great loss, psychological trauma, poverty and mistreatment. The injustice she must suffer is at times very moving, and we feel so endeared to her as a character that every hurt wounds us too. It's hard to create a balance between light humour and depth of feeling, but Vickers does so exquisitely.
I think what makes it all so compelling is its relatability. This is a book about small, everyday choices, which have implications bigger than we realise. Many of the wrongs Agnès is dealt are ostensibly very small - careless oversights, rumours, unfounded judgements - yet they pile up and spiral into huge injustices. This touches us because it makes us think about ourselves. If we're honest, we are prone to such things - to pride, to shame, to gossip, to laziness, to judgement - and we mustn't forget how far we can affect another person.
But it's not all about self-condemnation. Because 'The Cleaner of Chartres' also reminds us of the flip-side: even our smallest acts of kindness go a very long way. Helpfulness, generosity, tolerance, honesty: all are qualities that this book uplifts. It's really a very lovely novel.
You can buy 'The Cleaner of Chartres' from Waterstones by following this link (I'll receive a small commission if you do):
The Cleaner of Chartres, Sally Vickers - Waterstones
