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The Suitors The Suitors (2013)

by Cécile David-Weill(Favorite Author)

2.54 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

1470839288 (ISBN13: 9781470839284)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

Blackstone Audiobooks

review 1: I was attracted to this book because it was described as a comedy of manners. But I wound up enjoying it for another reason. I took my Junior year abroad in Geneva and I remember taking a French literature course. Showed up at the first class with my book in hand and was shocked when we spent the entire time on the first few sentences doing something they called an explication du texte. We explored why an author might have selected a particular word or used a specific verb form. I had never done anything like that before. I've always been a voracious reader...devouring books at highway speeds. This was like pulling off onto a country road. The Suitors took me right back to that classroom. There was so much importance placed on specific words and actions. I wound up enjoyin... moreg it for the nostalgia of it. I agree that some parts of the story seemed disjointed, but to me it felt like many of these passages were included to illustrate how much had changed from when Laure and Marie were children. You can contrast the relationship Laure had with her mother against the one she has with her son, for example. Of course, while I was reading this book I heard an interview with Lucy Lethbridge on her new book Servants A Downstairs History of Britain from the Nineteenth Century to Modern Times. I think I might need to move onto that just to reset myself with the view from the other side of the house...
review 2: One of the rare books that I gave up on - just couldn't get on with this, despite loving France and French. I saw no humour in the situations, and although I was initially interested in the world-views of old money French families, I grew weary of it very quickly. I may have preferred to read it in French, and it was certainly a bad idea to try it as an audiobook - I found the the voice inflections of the reader, Kate Reading, incredibly irritating - but regardless, I was not sufficiently interested in the characters or the story to keep going. less

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