Wonderfully atmospheric novel and once again Faulks shows he is the master at setting time and place and writing about the intensity of love. War damaged veterans, innocent young lovers, passion , love and loss, and all the usual ingredients of a ripping good Sebastian Faulks yarn. A great read.

Faulks's writing is gorgeous and his insights into the nature of love are both tender and sad. This is the second in the France-during-the-wars trilogy, of which I have only read "Birdsong." My main problem was when the secret of Anne's past is finally revealed, it is by Anne telling Charles in a long conversation, and throughout the rest of the novel, we are given only Charles's point of view of what Anne has endured. This follows a general pattern of dipping into and out of Anne's point of view but it feels a bit of a cheat. The ending is all at once sad and hope and inconclusive.

Anne has had a life full of injustice. Her father was killed and her mother committed suicide. She comes to Janvilliers seeking a new life with a new community and to put the past behind her.

Getting involved with a married man was not the best of choices, but that is life. The story of Hartmann and Anne with a third wheel of his wife Christine, on the sidelines and always waiting is a story of love, passion, but with a great deal of sadness.

Very descriptive of everyday life both at the inn and in the surrounding country of the area, the book is full of atmosphere especially of French village life.

Not a book one should read fast. This is one of those reads which should be read slowly to get the nuances of this story.

I read this book after reading about it on Cosy Books. My copy came to me via Open Library.

Agree with comments elsewhere that this does not have the same depth and range as other Faulk's books. It reads as an entertaining historical romance and doesn't for me, explore too much the wider picture. There are hints e.g. the 'Jewish' whispering around Hartmann and the divided attitude of people toward the coming war with Germany. The girl herself is consumed by a hidden past which will shape her future - perhaps that's the point; she encapsulates the psyche of a nation and a continent at that point! Think the concept was much better put across in Birdsong though.

Sebastian Faulks is effective at transporting readers into France during the 1930's. It was interesting to visit Lion D'or and to glimpse into the politics and morals of the day. However, this novel did not live up to his previous novel "Birdsong" which I could not put down. The ending was a bit abrupt, and I could not quite get into the main character's head - but I found the book enjoyable nonetheless.

I've been wanting to read Faulks' Birdsong for a while but wanted to read the French Trilogy in order so have finally started with The Girl at the Lion D'Or. The reviews have been putting me off but I thought it was OK, hopefully the other 2 will be much better.

A beautiful young woman, Anne Louvert, comes to the small town of Janvilliers to take a job working in the hotel "The Lion d'Or". She has had a childhood of hardship and tragedy precipitated by a mutinous event in World War I involving her father. The married Charles Hartmann, an older, wealthy lawyer, becomes involved with Anne. Will this affair lead to Anne being abandoned again by someone she deeply loves?

The historical novel is set against the backdrop of interwar France in the 1930s. Many of the characters are still trying to recover from the horror and loss of World War I, and the threat of another war looms. France's government is shaky and plagued by a number of scandals. As the book closes in Paris, we wonder how both Anne and the country of France will survive the storm. 3.5 stars.

This is a well-written page-turner and, as you would expect from Faulks, it shines brightest when detailing elements of the war. The air of tragedy-in-waiting permeates the whole book. While the townspeople, indeed the whole of France, is dreading the inevitable war that will come a few years down the line, the reader quakes with each boom and creak inside the mansion. It is not a difficult ending to imagine but that is I think precisely the point. It is as if the tide of history is dragging everyone towards a place they do not want to be.

The two central characters are delineated well but it was the bit-players that held my interest more. The story of the cafe's proprietor I would really like to read. All in all a novel you can get through without taxing the brain cells. It reminded me of a one-off drama you might come across while flicking TV channels one evening. Nothing wrong with that but I am not sure how long it will stick in my brain.

The Girl at the Lion d'Or - Sebastian Faulks - 1989

A superbly written and very humane book unfolding the story of a girl in France between the wars. It explores the nature of resilience and the ways in which we make choices within the constraints of the social and political climate in which we live. The characters and settings are made real.

Honestly, more like a 3.75, 3.8. But rating it with 3 stars doesn't seem fair. It's a good book. It takes a bit to dive deep into it and want to know more. The ending feels a bit rushed.

With the Great War still swimming around in collective memory, and the threat of another war looming on the dark horizon, the inhabitants of the small French village of Janvilliers are shaped by the political landscape of the day. Our heroine, Anne Louvert, has just arrived from Paris to take a job in an Inn, and is forced to piece together a new life for herself after being affected by war, and the suicide of her mother. It's not long before she works her magic with the locals, and finds a lover, the older and better off Charles Hartmann. The problem?, he is married (haven't we been here about a million times before), and also served in action. Torn between his wife and lover, Anne fears that her life will keep repeating the cycle of abandonment begun in her childhood. She is leading a hand to mouth existence, friendless, and crying out for pity. Make no mistake, Anne is written in a way that covers the reader head to foot in melodrama. The set-up sounds good, but things started to slowly go down hill. (Actually, that's not true, there are hills and there are hills, this was more like a Japanese bullet train skiing down a mountain).

Now for the bad news.

This was the second attempt at reading this, and I only just scraped through (although I did skim the last 50 pages to an underwhelming finale that is stuck in limbo), and still needed a triple espresso and the sugar content of three donuts to get that far!. To say I was bored is an understatement, by the mid-way point the novel was in dire need of a defibrillator to jolt it back to life. Dull. Dull. Dull. None of the characters did anything for me, the narrative was clunky, and even the semi-interesting sub-plots couldn't cover the cracks. They weren't cracks, more like craters.
The love triangle/plot has been tried and tested, and done in better ways by so many better writers.
I don't want to upset fans of Mr. Faulks so they start throwing eggs at my window, but I just don't think he is as good as he thinks he is. This leads to another problem. I really wanted to read 'Birdsong', however, not so sure now. Surely it can't be as bad as this?. So a little optimism still remains to try it one day.

The Girl at the Lion D'Or is both an account of a pitiful young woman's descent from problems of her own making, and a pretty good alternative to Temazepam. I loved it's setting, both in place and time, and the first third was good/mediocre at best. But on the whole was not impressed at all.
Handing out a sad looking two star rating is the best I can offer.

I'm not the target demographic for this book, but I did enjoy following the story of Anne and Hartmann.

Only 2 stars because the integration of history into this romance was at times a bit clumsy... also, more discussion of eczema than one would expect in a love story....