Did anyone else struggle with this? It's got all the ingredients - Occupied Paris casting a long shadow over the present - but it simply didn't work for me and at times seemed to be veering perilously towards time travel/magic realism which seems a lazy way out for a writer of Sebastian Faulkes's calibre. Not one of his best, for sure. 3* if I'm being generous.
There's a running joke about the characters' difficulties with the French language that made me smile, though.
'After we had the onglet and the anglais,' said Julian, 'I invented a story for Hannah.The quand one. Do you remember?...
'It was something like ... Quel cant qu'on raconte quand que le Comte est con qui racompte ses comptes. Quant á la conte du concombre, par conséquence, quand il danse le can-can dans le camp á Caen.'
Which does sum up rather neatly why we English struggle as soon as we cross the Channel. Hein?
4 comments:
I've only read 'Birdsong' so far - have three more on shelves and as I'm looking for a book to read at the moment might try one of the three!
Birdsong was his best, Veronica - ages since I read it but I remember being completely gripped.
I'd struggle with it just because it's Sebastian Faulks. That'll be one to leave off the list. All the others have been Kondo'ed.
I don't get very far Kondo-ing the bookshelves, Lucille. I've had to stop buying and embrace the library as even books I don't love are hard to part with. And the librarians know me as the lady who is constantly tipping over the 25 book limit.
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