Product Description

A beautifully controlled and powerful story of love and conscience, will and desire which begins when a mysterious young girl arrives to take up a post at the seedy Hotel du Lion d'Or in a small French town in the mid-1930s.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7267 in Books
• Published on: 1998-01-03
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Synopsis
A beautifully controlled and powerful story of love and conscience, will and desire which begins when a mysterious young girl arrives to take up the post at the seedy Hotel du Lion D'Or in a small French town in the mid 1930s.

From the Publisher
From the acclaimed author of Birdsong, Charlotte Gray and On Green Dolphin Street.

Customer Reviews

Nicely written but plodding first novel
Those who have read some of Faulks' later novels might be disappointed in this one. There's no question that Faulks is a good writer and the descriptions and phrasing are the same high quality as his later books. The problem for me was the plot - it's a slow moving, rather uninspired story.

Set in France between the wars, it tells of a love affair between a young waitress and a wealthy lawyer. There's not really a lot else in there - the obligatory references to war which you find in all Faulks books - and several potentially interesting plot threads are left unexplored. The ending was weak, with ends left untied and increased the frustration I felt with the book.

This is one of Faulks' first novels and it shows - you can tell that a good writer is lurking behind the plodding story, and it certainly contains hints of the brilliance that comes in later books such as 'Birdsong'. But I wouldn't recommend it particularly, unless you enjoy good writing for the sake of good writing alone. For those readers who look for an interesting plot to hold their attention, I would recommend moving straight on to Faulks' more mature works.

Average novel set in early 20th century France
Another Sebastian Faulks book set in France, focussing on the whims of human interaction in a 9130s small town. Split between the two wars, this book lacks the dramatic backdrop that characterises Birdsong and Charlotte Gray, and seems to meander without purpose. Characters start to develop, but fail to flower into really interesting people. This is a comment on a particular time and place, but fails to satisfy as a novel.

Shaking foundations
This was the first book I had read by Faulks and I enjoyed it thoroughly. The central storyline of poor servant girl meets rich, older society-man has no novelty of course but I did find myself drawn to the characters and some of the torment of the situation they created for themselves. That said it was difficult to hold on to the presumed innocence of Anne and the naivety of Hartmann. Was this really such an unexpected result to both of them? I was half-waiting throughout the book for the cynical motive of exploitation to be revealed from one side or the other. However, the author does keep the reader from total submission to idealised romanticism by including the knowing looks and restrained putdowns of the supporting cast. To the onlookers at least, the events are all so mundane.

The story is set in France and this allows some enjoyable prose describing the back-drop to the main theme. I particularly appreciated the parallel undermining of the foundations of Hartmann's imposing house by the inept builders at the same time as his marriage was threatened by his affair. His weakness with the builder's matched his weakness with Anne. In the end the episodes created huge cracks and a partial collapse of both his home and his marriage, but both did survive. The story left me wondering whether it was Hartmann or Anne who was more damaged for the future.