Faulks has so many words that mean “ache”…

Book review:

The Girl at the Lion d’Or

by Sebastian Faulks (b1953)

New York: Vintage International/Vintage Books/A Division of Random House, Inc., 1989.

246 pages

Sebastian Faulks writes about the vagaries of life, the daily choices in our lives, the uncountable futures, and the singularity of the past. We think we remember various pasts, and we may struggle to reconcile them.

In The Girl at the Lion d’Or, Faulks invites us to live in the minds of Hartmann and Anne. Sometimes the reader realizes that confusion is in their minds, usually their failures are clear enough, and their successes of the moments must be cherished for their bounty.

Richly Gallic, redolent of the interwar period in Europe, The Girl at the Lion d’Or is a cumulative revelation of Anne (the girl) and a steadily burdensome understanding of the sad hindrances in her life. She comes to love Hartmann, who is ultimately contemptibly weak and viciously temporizing.

I wanted to read faster near the end so I could learn the outcome, but I resisted the impulse.

Faulks makes it worthwhile to read every word. His prose is tenaciously literate and evocative; he has no mere words—he writes passages that invite the reader to understand deeply and to feel deeply.

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Book review: The Proud Tower

…a lot more than a history book…

by Barbara Tuchman

click here

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many waters: more poems with 53 free verse poems,

and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)

and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”