On Salomé

I read this as a free advance copy from the publisher, in exchange for an honest review; the opinions are entirely my own.

Salomé is a remarkable novel. I began it skeptical — the protagonist was romanticizing France, and I worried it would be an escapist fantasy about love and a kind of Holy Land for young American women — but Leslie Baird challenges all of that with tact and grace. On its surface the book is a reimagining of the biblical Salomé. King Herod felt challenged by John the Baptist’s message, but John was so popular that Herod refused to kill him; then, amazed by the beauty of his stepdaughter’s dancing, Herod granted her anything she wanted, and her mother, Herodias, demanded the head of John the Baptist, so Salomé asked for it and Herod delivered it on a platter. That’s the end of the story.

Several of those pieces are here. Salomé is, of course, Salomé. Courtney, the American protagonist, was born on John the Baptist’s saint day, June 24th, so there’s an immediate identification with him; her mother is named Elspeth (a clear nod to Elizabeth — both Elizabeth and Elspeth gave birth late in life); Nathalie, Salomé’s mother, plays Herodias; and Marco maps onto Herod. But the narrative quickly diverges, and what’s told here is less a retelling of the John-and-Salomé story than a new act of creation that uses the biblical figures as a frame. It opens with Courtney’s conversation with Salomé on a flight to Paris; the two hit it off, and Salomé invites Courtney to her home, where things turn strange — everyone has odd nightmares, Salomé’s mother suffers frequent breakdowns, and a general atmosphere of suspicion settles in. In the process Courtney’s romantic image of France is shattered, and Baird handles France’s legacy of far-right politics deftly (the Front National, or whatever it’s called now). The setting is apt: somewhere near Angers, with scenes in Nantes, Saint-Nazaire, and Paris — and Le Mans, not far from Angers, is the only place I’ve seen active attempts to recruit for the Action Française, the far-right league that mattered so much between the late nineteenth century and the Second World War.

Baird also weaves in the ethically fraught topics that billionaires, and tech barons especially, are so taken with: above all, how to live forever. There are nods to simulation theory too, though they’re less prominent than the life-extension debates. Where she diverges from the contemporary discourse, to her credit, is in the supernatural: Salomé is certainly a book out to re-enchant modernity, but Baird doesn’t flinch from the dark underbelly of the supernatural. Her characters are almost all sympathetic, with one or two exceptions, and even those who seem harsh or cruel on the surface are drawn with thought and dimension. I suspect Salomé will be a fan favorite, especially in BookTok and Bookstagram circles, but it deserves much wider attention than that: it balances plot and characterization beautifully, and it’s a joy to watch the characters develop over the course of it.