Villa Wintrebert

by Penelope Curtis

In Banyuls-sur-Mer, French Catalonia, the Villa Wintrebert turns its back on passers-by and looks instead down the length of its enormously long, tropical garden. Renamed after the pioneering naturalist Paul Wintrebert, who once lived there with his wife, the villa was also aptly known as ‘Loin des Yeux’ (Out of Sight). In her speculative history of the place, its inhabitants and visitors, Penelope Curtis imagines the relationships of tenderness and passion across three generations of women, witnessed at a distance by two little girls. Harmony is disrupted when a well-intentioned commission to the renowned local sculptor, Aristide Maillol, shines a light on the fundamental fragility of the women’s relationship. Villa Wintrebert is a story of childhood, of adult complicity, and of the unfinished sculpture which fractures the female friendship on which the villa and its garden had depended.

Genres: France

120 pages, Paperback

Published July 3, 2026

Reviews

[Peter Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

I disagree with the general tenor of the online promotion as "tender and exquisite" or a "charmed world" (Amanda Craig). At its heart this is a story of ruthless appropriation by lovers, artist, curator, biologists, explorers and others. All impinge upon the notion of *being*, not only of individuals but of objects, both existing in states of continual flux. Being is transactional rather than fixed.

Derrida's concept of *iterability*—that repetition across different contexts inevitably alters meaning—seems particularly apposite. Every return to the Maillol torso changes it: body, sculpture, commission, photograph, memory, fragment, rumour. My own attempts to approach *Villa Wintrebert* therefore feel necessarily provisional, whereas a review conventionally seeks clarification. Curtis instead practises an exquisite *différance*: meaning is continually deferred; people and objects are absent, dead or elsewhere. At its heart lies a **locked object**.

The more I reread and think about this novel across its three generations, the more complex it becomes: layers of feeling accumulating upon multiple histories. The centrality of the garden, and of the villa itself, is analogous to Lévi-Strauss's *The Raw and the Cooked* (and ultimately the rotten): nature cultivated, abandoned and transformed. It is not a difficult novel to read, but its patterning and repetitions across many decades remain fluid; as in life, definitive conclusions remain illusive and shift according to our age and with each rereading.

I have not visited Banyuls-sur-Mer since the early 1960s. I remember only the intense light, the shrivelling heat, and my mother screaming when a praying mantis landed on her.

[Loren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved the atmosphere and the writing.

This is one of those novels you will get more from on each re-read, as there’s a lot to unpack within its relatively simple prose. Themes of appropriation and possession, and the subtle sapphic undertones were peppered throughout, but never fully explored. This didn’t feel like a disservice to the reader, in my opinion, but something that provokes thought. Something you want to come back to again and again, to see how differently it may be perceived or the new things you might spot.

I think I need to read more French novels, as I’ve loved the few I’ve read recently.

[Amaraaa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read this in a day: not too long or difficult. I loved the scenery and description, but I would say that there are some plot points that I think could have been brought out more, for example the slightly sapphic undertones. As well as this, the whole way through I had no clue who the narrator was x

But it was good- art history X french summer is my niche so can't really complain