An elegant small jewel of a book set between the Wars in France. A penniless bar waitress arrives in a small town, captivates a restless, wealthy, middle-aged man of integrity. Difficult choices, strong characters, the will to survive weave the proverbial tangled web.

I picked this up from my parents book shelf, not knowing much about the book just recognising the authors name. I wanted something light after not finishing my previous book and this is exactly what it was. I have read a few of Sebastian Faulks novels, if you haven’t read Engleby then add it to your to read list, and they are always a good read. This book is not in the same league as birdsong but it’s a refreshing love story and an easy book to read.

It is set in a little town in France in the 1930s. It begins with a mysterious young girl, Anne, arriving in the town to work at the small and seedy Hotel - The Lion D’or. There she meets a married man Hartmann and from there transpires a story of love, power, will and conscience. You get a clear image of what France was like during this time period, the fear of Germany and the problems with France.

I've read two novels by Faulks now (after giving up on his Jeeves book), both of them historical romances, both involving adulterous affairs, this one in 1936 France, the other in 1960 America. Both also involve sympathetic people trying to deal with emotions they don't fully understand and trying to do the right thing in impossible situations. In this one the cheated-on character was the wife; in the other it was the husband. Part of this one was the gradual realization of how WW I damaged these characters, even though only one was directly involved, and he only for a short time. If Faulks had dwelt on this from the start it would have seemed cliched; but since he very slowly allowed parts of the back stories to be revealed, it takes on unforgettable significance. The settings are beautifully described, the characters seem completely real. I was particularly taken by this passage spoken by the husband in the affair to a friend, as he is gradually coming to realize there is more going on in his emotions than he had allowed himself to think. He remembers hearing a Beethoven string quartet and being so moved that he wept. "There was a feeling in the music greater than any emotion I had ever experienced or even imagined. It was frightening. It wasn't the sadness or the triumph of a symphony, or the exhilaration of something classical, it was colder and far greater...I went back four times to hear that piece of music. And I couldn't bear it. I listened to it again and again, because I was trying to get on top of it, to comprehend it, but I couldn't. The power of the feeling in it was too great...Until that time I'd thought that every feeling could be taken on and understood. I thought it was a challenge--that any emotion could be assimilated if you tried hard enough. This was the first time I realized my mind was just not large enough to comprehend properly what some other people have felt." This was the first time in the book that I sensed where it was going to go, and how wrenching and difficult the outcome might be for all concerned. It's a rare book that makes me sympathize with all the characters as much as this one did.

A very "French" novel, not so much in the setting - a small bourgeois town close to the ocean - but in the introspective dissection of the lives of ordinary people living their ordinary lives. I don't know if "existentialism" is the right word, but I was reminded of the works of Zola, Balzac or Tolstoy. To compare Anne from the Lion d'Or with Anna Karenina is perhaps a little forced, but that is what her passion for life and her tragic condition evoked in me.

I was also detecting an Erich Maria Remarque flavor, especially of Arc de Triomphe, because the novel deals with the aftermath of the carnage in the trenches of Verdun or Somme. This is the tale of the survivors, those that participated in the trenches and those that waited at home for husbands or children who never came back.

This is a sad and disturbing book, but not quite as defeatist as the Remarque tale I mentioned. Faulks allows his characters their moment in the sunshine, waves before them the possibility of redemption through love or through the occasional kindness of strangers. He has a delicate touch and a deft hand at sketching believable secondary characters in a couple of phrases. The major theme of the story is given in a paragraph at the beginning of the story, right after the memorable entrance of a solitary figure, bereft on a dark, empty, rainswept railroad station.

When the good Lord made this world from the infinite number of possibilities open to him and selected - from another limitless pool - the kind of misery that his creatures should be subject to, he selected only one model. The moment of bereavement. Death, desertion, betrayal - all the same thing. The child sent from his parents, the widow, the lover abandoned - they all feel the same emotion which, in its most extreme form, finds expression in a cry.

Anne has a dark secret in her life, one that has made her taciturn and wary of other people. But she also has an inner strength, a zest for life that transcends the poverty and the tediousness of her humble condition. If anyone deserved a lucky break in their life, it would be her, and with every page I read I hoped the author will be kind to her by the end.
I'm not going to tell you in this review if she did or not, but I highly recommend you read and find out about her fate.


--- spoiler alert ---


There's a disturbing rape scene near the end of the book that the author used to great effect in order to illustrate how it is not the selfish, inconsiderate bastards that inflict the most harm in a relationship, but the sensitive, nice guys who let you fall in love with them and then break your heart claiming they do it for your own good.

Beautifully written . A timeless love story which for me made the characters back stories and the back drop of 1930s France seem irrelevant.

This was the first of Sebastian Faulk's trilogy of war stories and is very mediocre compared to "Birdsong" and "Charlotte Gray" The plot line is Madame Bovaryish and predictable. A British young woman with a mysterious past flees to the French countryside where she meets an older married man etc. etc. etc.
I was disppointed. I would recommend it only to Faulks fans who want to complete the trilogy. I read "Birdsong" and "Charlotte Gray" first. Had I read this, I doubt I would have read "Birdsong" which I found just extraordinary.

Anne Louvet fumbles with two heavy suitcases and leaves big city Paris for small town Janvilliers. She has a waitress job waiting for her at the Hotel du Lion d'Or. While the book is mostly from the POV of Anne, there are also those with whom she interacts, mostly Charles Hartmann. The time period is sometime in the 1930s and there is talk about the Germans invading again. Everyone seems resigned to there being no French resistance, that the people have no more will to do so after the devastation of the recent war.

Although never designated as such on Goodreads, this is one of Faulks' French Trilogy. Because that information escaped my attention when I read the other two (Birdsong and Charlotte Gray), I got more than I anticipated. This and those others are reminders that, while several million lives were lost in The Great War, the lives of those who survived or were left behind were forever altered. The series tells us of just three circumstances. We should know that there are an almost unimaginable number of ways in which lives were altered.

This did not affect me as strongly as did Birdsong. Charlotte Gray is set during WWII and I wasn't as interested, but I note in my review of that novel Faulks continues to remind us that war experiences have a ripple effect to subsequent generations. He does so again in this novel. I think it slides into 4-stars, but perhaps only just.

3.5 stars

Girl meets boy in the aftermath of the war.

You know which war.

Boy is actually an older married man.

Unhappily married, of course.

Girl and unhappily married man begin an affair.

Girl reveals a terrible family secret from the war.

Older married man ends the affair.

British author recycles these cliches.

The cliches gain a certain sheen because the setting is France.

I am partial to French settings.

Still, the whole thing is one big cliche.

With a French setting.

So cliche.

I began reading this having had experience of the best (Birdsong) and the worst (Charlotte Gray) of Faulk's work. It didn't really sound like it was a book I would enjoy, but I have to say I was very pleasantly surprised. Faulk use of the English language is fantastic, the metaphors and descriptions allow the reader to fully picture how the people and places within the novel look and sound.

The central romance of the story was not entirely original, and bore a striking resemblance to the central romances in both Birdsong and On Green Dolphin Street. These recurring themes of loss, regret and adultery appear again, and the tragic nature of the relationship that is doomed from the start is obvious. However, Faulk has managed to make the characters here likeable. Something he failed to do in Charlotte Grey.

2nd only to Birdsong in the Sebastian Faulk novels I have read

This is one of the books I feel will stay with me after finishing it since a lot of things Mr. Faulks talked about I didn't quite understand and had to look up... Whoops, it was a wonderful, telling story of a girl anguish and her finding love to a married man. I loved Mr. Faulks writing tone when he was describing places, weather and so forth. Good read.

This is a lovely little novel. It's a love story with a basic Cinderella set-up, starring Mme Bouin as the evil step-mother and the Patron as the Fairy Godmother. Very simply and intelligently told with little flourishes and cross-correspondences of meaning. I particularly enjoyed the metaphor of the cellar being built with what is happening to Anne.