... a sleek, lush romance... [Never Anyone But You is] a deftly conventional treatment of a stubbornly unconventional subject. Thomson’s [novel] is an extraordinary and rollicking tale, occasionally slowed down by his need to make sure that readers are getting the message.
The fact that Rupert Thomson has centered Never Anyone But You, his novel about the pair, on that 40-plus-year relationship suggests that his imagination was fired by a queer intimacy that spanned two world wars and was intertwined with a highly original, often collaborative Surrealist artistic practice in which identities were fluid and ever-changing. This turns out to be a false assumption. Thomson, the author of 10 previous novels, many of them either thrillers or incorporating the elements of thrillers, doesn’t appear to be much interested in those aspects of Cahun and Moore. He isn’t obliged to be, of course, although one might well wonder why so much rich raw material has been left on the table—or signal that Cahun and Moore’s relationship is at the heart of this novelistic transformation of history when it isn’t. Thomson offers, instead, two well brought-up young ladies who say things like 'What’s gender, anyway?' ... Thomson’s engagement with Cahun’s work is slight, and his engagement with Moore’s nearly nonexistent ... it’s the war and the acts of resistance that nearly got Cahun and Moore killed that bring his best writing to the fore. Once Cahun and Moore are arrested by the Gestapo, the narrative comes alive; the scenes are tense, particular and embodied ... While one can hardly blame him for his preferences, one might wonder why he chose to address the rather extraordinary entire arc of lives in which he was only truly interested in one tense episode.
Thomson has created a taut, magnificently controlled novel about creativity and personal survival that is a lucid reflection of the period it describes, as the surface of a surrealist picture is lucid... There are baldly factual passages that make you wonder why he has cast it as fiction at all, but then he will surprise you with the limpid clarity of an observation... Like Cahun’s photomontages, it looks like life, but it’s not life, exactly. Only art can achieve this degree of realism.
With skill and verve, Thomson relates the largely untold story of two unsung heroines who set out to defy convention and ended up resisting the Nazis ... his characters are not only lovers. One of the reasons they come so thrillingly alive on the page is because he successfully portrays them in many different guises—as artists, socialites, iconoclasts and resistance fighters. In each case he gets under their skin and into their minds ... In all sections of this remarkable novel we find ourselves cheering on two fearlessly individual women who opted to live 'instinctively, and without restraints.'
Anyone But You recounts the love of two real people whose lives encompassed events still historically close but far enough away to have the aura of romanticism ... There is so much... to this intense novel. Historical facts are only part of truth. The narrator tells her version. Evidence, even that of photographs — the most durable element of their relationship — is always partial.
The ingenuity of Thomson’s novel is its focus on the relationship from Moore’s perspective, fleshing out her identity as a person and an artist in her own right. In this way, Never Anyone But You imagines a tender and, at times, volatile love story for Cahun and Moore. He explores the couple’s forty-five-year relationship from beginning to end; twisting and turning through the uncertainties of young love, the security and maturity of lifelong partnership, and the atrocities and violence of two world wars ... One of the strengths of Never Anyone But You is that it doesn’t shy away from the plentiful uncertainties of Moore’s life and her sorrowful end. The final passages, some of the most striking in the novel, parallel the final scenes of Kate Chopin’s The Awakening; exploring the character’s resolved final moments in a haze of tranquil dreams and reflections. It could very well be that our best attempt at understanding Marcel Moore and Claude Cahun’s love and art is through Thomson’s psychologically mesmerizing re-imagination of their lives, coupled with viewing their art.
Rupert Thomson’s new novel follows the contours of a remarkable life. Lucy Schwob, born in 1894 to a cultured and prosperous Nantes family, moved to Paris in 1920, where she developed strong links with the Surrealist movement and adopted the name Claude Cahun ... Thomson’s prose has a striking lightness of texture, even when he produces one of his characteristic flourishes, embellishing a sensation or an emotion with an image of controlled gorgeousness ... As the book goes on, the heightened moments become even more gorgeous, though in their sensational beauty they risk becoming incompatible with Moore’s point of view ... Since it is both nourished by the vogue for Claude Cahun and feeds back into it, acknowledging the contributions of the leading researcher in the field, Never Anyone But You risks seeming like the narrative arm of an art historical enterprise, rather than a novel with its own power source. The difficulty of reading it innocently, without reference to the status of its central figure, is part of a more general difficulty faced by fiction in the information age.
The pleasures of Never Anyone But You are, like the narrative’s focal companionship, discreet, private, and totally immersive. Thomson is rendered nearly invisible next to the power and endurance of the relationship he’s writing about. And it is his consistent attentiveness to the interiors of these women and their lives that makes this such a lovely reading experience. He’s written the kind of book all incorrigible novel addicts will treasure.
Steeped in historical detail, surprisingly timely statements on gender norms and mental health, and suspenseful moments of choice and deliberation, Never Anyone But You is a captivating and heartfelt tale of love and the many shapes it can take.
Thomson approaches the women’s story with poetic empathy, yet the result can seem scant and oddly paced, swooping in for consequential moments, then jumping ahead without connection. The effect is both beguiling and detached. A real-life modernist relationship is revived with commitment if not quite enough conviction.
