The Mercury Visions of Louis Daguerre: A Novel

3.5 stars

"I open the eye of the camera to something I sense is there but cannot fully name or see"

The Mercury Visions of Louis Daguerre is the debut novel by prize-winning Australian-born author, Dominic Smith. Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre's claim to fame was as a pioneer in the field of photography, inventing the Daguerreotype. By the latter portion of his life, he knows that the mercury vapour has poisoned him physically, but is unaware of the mental changes it has wrought. He is gripped by a delusion, firmly believing that the apocalypse is nigh, so he makes a list of ten items he wishes to capture in Daguerreotypes (his doomsday list), to be stored in the Parisian catacombs:

1. A beautiful woman, naked

2. The sun

3. The moon

4. The perfect Paris boulevard

5. A pastoral scene

6. Galloping horses

7. A perfect apple

8. A flower (type to be determined)

9. The king of France

10. Isobel Le Fournier

The last is the woman with whom he has been in love since the age of twelve, and to whom he has not spoken for over forty years.

Smith's tale alternates between two time periods: the late 1840s, in Paris and Orleans, as Daguerre assembles his doomsday list and searches for Isobel; from 1800 to 1839, in Orleans and Paris, recounting significant events in Louis's life. Smith's extensive research is apparent on every page. Smith said he aimed "to capture the flavour of the real Daguerre's life and the historical context in which he achieved his fame" and this he has done. Both young Louis and the sixty year old man whose brain had been poisoned by mercury vapour are well depicted, as is mid-nineteenth century Paris.

Despite some stunning prose: "They sat motionless as it unfolded, as the cloudscape grew backlit and the trees gave off the shimmer of ice granules trapped in bark. The snow shadows gained definition in a sunburst, blued and deepened by a rise in contrast. Louis stood and moved slowly to the camera. He made a few Adjustments to the camera and looked out at the radiant sky. Here was the way the vault of heaven would crack open on the final day, with those dazzled and portentous clouds, with shunts of granulated light. It resembled nothing so much as a sea of glass. He imagined saints driven through with sabres, chariots of righteous angels, a red dragon rising through coal smoke", this novel does not achieve the standard of his most recent novel, The Last Painting of Sara de Vos, but as a debut, it demonstrates his potential. An interesting read.