Mistral's Daughter

Book review by Tracey
This is the story of Julien Mistral, an arrogant French painter, and the three generations of women in his life. Published in 1983 the tale begins with Maggy Lunel, an aspiring painter’s model who comes to Paris to make her fortune. She gets entangled with Julien Mistral, an unknown painter who is also struggling to make a name for himself. Maggy becomes a sensation. Mistral has painted her during the midst of their affair and his work is to be shown and purchased. This is the beginning of his fame. He betrays Maggy and their affair ends. Maggy moves on and eventually founds a top modeling agency in New York. She has a daughter who becomes the top model and ends up also having an affair with the now married Mistral. What happens after this point I won’t reveal.

I wasn’t very keen on reading this story, but it was in my library and I am in the process of cleaning out. Although I found it to be a good read in the end, the character of Julien Mistral was definitely the villain for me in this story and I didn’t like him one bit. He didn’t have one endearing quality so it was hard for me to have a lot of interest in a story that featured him so prominently. Published in 1983, this novel was apparently made into a movie starring Stacy Keach. I never saw the movie version, but this book happened to have a couple of TV guide sheets stuck in the back of it. They were dated September 22, 1984 and advertised the movie.

Tracey.