Who knew Joanne Harris in "Chocolate",as I did, will experience some difficulty in recognizing her in this new-old
(it has been reprinted already) book. "Gentlemen and Players" it's an (according my own humble opinion) odd and violent book and it's impossible to feel indifferent about this story. Appart from all the differences, at some point it reminded me Lewis Carrol and "Alice in the Wonderland". Maybe because of the Queen of Spades, maybe because of the childwood concept in Victorian England (which after all remains till nowadays). Henry Paul Chester is a victorian artist whose
past hides a terrible secret that has left profound scars in him self and in his art. His obsession by painting "innocent" young girls, will lead him to Effie, a nine year old girl he starts to use as a model. Besides using her as exclusive model he raises her to become is future wife. Some years after Effie and Chester get married and then at that exact moment things start to get bitter.Henry doesn't accept that Effie grew up.That she is no longuer that
little girl with braids and that she claims for her self the role of woman and wife. Henry trys to keep her in a "bubble".He just wants to him self that little girl, so he keeps her drugged and away from everything that makes her dream.Her books, her poetry... Effie seeks then consolation in Chester's rival, the unscrupulous Moses Zachary Harper,with whom she will create an huge complicity. Howerver it wont be him who will comfort her,but Fanny Miller the owner of a "Red light House"(a brothel) who sees in Effie the daughter that has been murdered ten years before. Together they try to unvail the dark past of Henry Chester and they conspire a wicked plan to uncover him. However the use of magic and drugs, will not work just as well as they thought it would, and the end of this story is far more cruel and unreal that you could ever imagine. Passionating, violent and at the same time gentil , only Joanne Harris to write it. And here's the contradiction, in one hand it's impossible to make a connection to "Chocolate" on the other hand her extreme sensibility.