A slow read but heartbreaking.

A beautiful book that was a very thoughtful gift. There is so much to recommend this book that I do not have the words to describe so my review is simply that this will go into my top 20 books ever.

I full-on hated this book and I will never forgive Britain's Top 100 Favourites for making me read it, never.

Outline: Mary is married to Charlie, an English werewolf diplomatist in Washington by day, alcoholic by night and day and all the time. Mary ends up having an affair with a journalist, Frank - not because her husband is a crazyass, which would make SENSE, but just because. Mary has two children towards whom she feels a strong flavour of cannibalism. Of note, she hates the idea of sending them to boarding school in England - they hate it too! - but does it anyway, for no reason I could discern.

Charlie suffers a breakdown, which is what happens when you use Grey Goose as your breakfast, lunch, dinner and five-a-day, and is posted back to England. Mary has a Very Tragic Last Meeting with Frank in which they decide to NEVER MAKE CONTACT AGAIN AS IT WOULD HURT TOO MUCH, and there's even (nearly) an aeroport-chasing scene. Then it ends. Thank god.

the faint aroma of honey, calico, half-baked bread, wild strawberries, of warmth itself

I will buy babies smelling of talcum powder, but that is IT.

the edible cartilage and soft tissue of the ear, which she had sniffed and nibbled like a rabbit

I WASN'T LYING ABOUT THE CANNIBALISM.

"What are those men doing?" said Mary.
"Not something that concerns a woman."

Yup, Frank is any woman's Ideal.

Her lips were very ... how would you put this ... three-dimensional.

HOSHIT. REALLY? BECAUSE I THOUGHT LIPS WERE FLAT AS PAPER, MYSELF.

The following three quotes I labelled 'retrospectoscope', because it was so obviously a twenty-first century view of events that happened ... whenever they happened. A long time ago. Before feminism and electricity, I DON'T KNOW.

This giant folly of pride, greed and quixotic ambition was about to receive, as far as Charlie could see, a cataclysmic judgement.

Vietnam. I didn't realise the US Government admitted that was a heinous crime against humanity NOW, let alone at the time.

Really, thought Frank, the panic over the identity of the potential vice-president was morbid when Kennedy himself was so young.

OH WOW, BECAUSE HE MIGHT GET SHOT! ... wait, that'd NEVER happen.

above the enslaved lands of Eastern Europe.

I know peeps in the old times hated Communism as much as I do, but 'enslaved'? Were the atrocities of the USSR well known before the Wall came down? Because, dude, I thought they couldn't even get Levis, let alone information in or out.

He had 'finer feelings' [...] but the intensity of his passion for Mary had banished them to some mental Alaska, far beyond reach.

People can't reach Alaska?! When Sarah Palin can see Russia from her HOUSE?

My hate cannot be (adequately) textually rendered.

I came to this book full of anticipation for something special as I had so enjoyed ‘Engleby’. It turned out that I was not sure if I loved it or survived it. The love story between Mary and Frank was clearly and beautifully spread out before us, and Mary’s agony at what she was doing and the acknowledgement that indeed she was one of those kind of people was painfully clear. But I was frustrated by the pages and pages of description of New York streets and then later a similar treatment of downtown Moscow. I quess that this was to give us a comparison of the two very different cities, but to me it seemed a wordy and unnecessary deviation. Having said that, 3 stars for ride.

alcoholism and complex love triangle

imperfectly written-- moments of brilliant insight into people's motivations, inner lives, and self-destructive behaviours, and some sloppy writing that feels as if it was impatiently done with insufficent thought or editing; some interesting observations of english perceptions of americans, and vice versa

Sebastian Faulks is a superb writer - he feeds his readers bit by bit, and just when you think you can read his mind, he changes course. I loved every paragraph.

“On Green Dolphin Street” is an old fashion love story set in 1959 during the Kennedy/Nixon campaign. Charlie Van der Linden who is posted to the British embassy in Washington D.C. and his wife Mary a beautiful shy and reserved English woman have a cocktail party one night where she meets Frank Renzo a dashing exciting reporter who has been everywhere and covered stories from the fall of Dien Bien Phu to the Emmett Till murder trial in Mississippi. Slowly Mary and Frank fall in love. We learn a little about each of their early lives and the exciting time with the Kennedy/Nixon election. I really loved Mary and Frank’s relationship. Charlie drank too much and was too needy. This was my second Sebastian Faulks’s book, can’t wait until the third.

One of my favourite authors, Faulks has given me much to think about over the years, and this certainly delivers on that score.

Outwardly the story takes characters on the periphery of political and international tension in the 1960's, using the events of upheaval as a backdrop for some otherwise ordinary lives.

His objects though are to explore meanings of fidelity, personality, mortality and death. It is in the last of these that he moved me the most. The narrative itself left me a little frustrated, despite his wonderful prose.

It's unfortunate when you read a book from an author for the first time and end up having a negative experience doing so. I couldn't bring myself to finish this book as I found it too long and filled with pointless drivel that added very little value to the plot.

For an apparent subject which wouldn’t normally interest me, I was surprised by how compelling I found this narrative. Yes, more Faulks, methinks.

I like a man who's not afraid to write a love story.

But this one is a little low-key, a little wandering and dull, though I hate to say it about any SF book. He is one of my favorite writers and I read this book because it's the only one I haven't.

Brits in DC in the JFK era and I enjoyed some of the complaints they had, such as American coffee being too hot and too weak? I didn't know that. Maybe that's why Starbucks caught on. Also Mary notes how many monuments there are in DC when the US after all is such a young country--what is that they're afraid of forgetting, she wonders.

A lovely portrait of NYC as the pages go by and the writing is naturally superb.

That's the problem when you author notable books such as Charlotte Gray and Birdsong; an ordinary nice book just doesn't seem memorable.