Early Sebastian Faulks novels convey a wonderful sense of time and place and ‘On Green Dolphin Street’ set in 1959, evokes perfectly the period of the later Cold War, the insidious investigations of the FBI, McCarthyism, U2 Spy Planes, the rise of JFK and his historic election victory of Nixon, Race Riots in Mississippi. This is a wonderful read - and for my money, this is easily Faulks' best novel – as, against this ground breaking backdrop he explores one of Life's most dangerous imponderables: should one stay true to one’s traditional upbringing and marital vows and live a restrained life not knowing what lies beyond the realms of respectability and convention, or surrender to one’s animal impulses and explore, dangerously, deviously and sensually an extra marital affair, and live life to the full no matter the consequences. But this is far more than a will she/ won’t she dilemma, as Faulks explores the essence of intimacy and attraction, need and dependency, and examines the explosive power of desire, and dangerous loss of self control. He captures vividly the emotional plight of two lost souls feverishly grasping opportunity and beginning an emotional journey that is life affirming but imbued with inevitable consequences that must be confronted. His characterization is faultless as the central characters, all flawed in their different ways, confront their future lives with the very real possibility of letting their last chance of happiness slip through their fingers.As Julie Myerson literature critic and author declared in The Observer, this book "is one of the most heart-shakingly accurate depictions of how it feels to be female and in love that I have ever read". Each character has their vulnerabilities, but their inner strengths are also well delineated.For the timorous Mary, 'Everything had come at once, the tenderness, desire, the sublime simplicity of happiness that depended only on his presence and his face, the fierce knowledge that told her it was him or nothing but the void. And that it should have come at this time in her life, when she had thought that such things were past.'Mary has been a 'good girl' and is now a dutiful diplomatic wife approaching middle age, when she experiences an unexpected sexual awakening that shocks her by its rapturous power and urgency. 'At this moment, for the first time in her life, she had experienced the transcendent combination of the fierce tenderness, such as she felt for Richard and Louisa (her young children) with the physical desire that had once before raged, many years ago, with David Oliver (her first lover) and which she had resigned herself never again to know. The simultaneous experience of the two feelings was not a simple addition of their respective effects; it felt to Mary as though the force was squared. She could not imagine how she was supposed to deal with it; but it felt like death - imperative, unavoidable, the only issue.'" The practicalities of what she had fallen into and the vocabulary for them - 'affair' and 'infidelity' - had seemed to her banal and inadequate; she had always believed the adventure of marriage was incomparably more interesting than the petty indulgence of betrayal "Frank Renzo reflects upon his time in New York, ' The city made him feel he could be many people, that in his middle thirties he was nowhere near the finished version of himself, and that even if he ever got there, that too might turn out to be provisional - not a stable compound of temperament and experience, but a bundle of momentary inclinations.'For Frank, also, an all consuming passion comes with a compelling immediacy like first love,‘ When he first saw Mary standing in front of the table in her sitting room…he had the sense of already knowing her profoundly well. The way he then behaved…. Was unprecedented but that was inevitable as she had opened up in hima depth of anxiety and desire that he had previously never known, and a new fever demanded a new remedy.’Mary, too, finds their all consuming passion so intense that separation leaves her bereft as with a bereavement, and she reflects upon the morality of her life-shaping dilemma,‘ To have him, be with him, see him, be part of him, is a natural imperative, because in some way he is me, my inner self.’"He raked his fingers through her hair, down to the skull, as his body filled hers. All the way, he thought, I will go all the way, till I find her; and with her head between his hands he too let out a cry, because he felt pity for her soul."‘ As her thought became less coherent, she closed her eyes…. The deeper into sensation she went…the more it was like going into a room of utter darkness, which she felt was familiar from a time before her birth; it was something other or beyond; it was like death or very near it.’
I didn't like this book. I really didn't like this book. But I couldn't stop reading it. I read the first chapter, and thought "this is not my cup of tea". I read another chapter, and thought I can dtop reading it at any time. I don't have to plough my way through it. But I read another chapter anyway. I don't like this book. I don't like the characters, or the clothes they wear. They are the wrong generation, my parents generation. But still I read. Why? It's 1960, the election campaign in which Kennedy was elected, the first American election I can really remember. I remember wishing that Kennedy would win, because Kennedy was a Roman Catholic and back then I was a High Church Anglican, and High Church Anglicans were second-class Catholics. Kennedy would bring morality and Christian values to American politics, world politics, or so I thought. The Cuban missile crisis put me right on that score. American hypocrisy, and the thought that Krushchev had saved the world from a nuclear holocaust. 1960 was also the year I first heard the name of Jack Kerouac, the year I read The Dharma bums. Jack Kerouac is the same generation as these people, but what a world of difference. But still I read it, until I eventually reached the end. I think it is well written, but it recalled to me people of my parents' generation, with their business suits and ties and hats and women with hats and gloves and lipstick and high-heeled shoes and well-stocked drinks cabinets. When people visited you had, at the very least, to offer them a choice of brandy, whisky, beer and gin. People of that class did not offer skokiaan and Barberton. And Faulks describes it all, in excuciating detail -- the clink of ice in glasses, the martinis, the clothes, and all the rest. No, it is not my kind of book, and these are not my kind of people.Faulks is even self-mocking, having characters rather disparagingly referring to novels about suburban adultery, like Peyton Place, in the middle of his own novel about suburban adultery. I didn't like this book, but I read it.
What do You think about On Green Dolphin Street (2003)?
This was the first Faulks book I've read, although I know we have the French trilogy. The writing was gorgeous, which is good, because it wasn't the greatest story ever. It's about a British diplomat's wife who has an affair while living with her husband in Washington DC. I did like the depictions of the emotions involved in infidelity. She loves her--(Non sequitor: Hey, there's no male word for mistress, is there? That's weird, there should be. Mister? Master? Neither of those are right. It's like how there's no satisfying female equivalent of 'guy'.) Anyway, she loves Frank, the guy she's having an affair with, but she never stops loving her husband, who is an alcoholic undergoing a nervous breakdown and professional difficulties. When she is with her family, she feels like standing by them is the most important thing, but when she's with Frank, she feels like she can leave them behind for him. We get some chapters from Frank's perspective--he knows and likes the husband, and the husband's perspective, as he goes from ignorance to suspicion to certainty about the affair. I just thought it was a fairly honest portrayal of all emotions involved in infidelity--absolutely nothing is black and white.Set in 1960, this all unfolds against the backdrop of Nixon and Kennedy's presidential campaigns and the cold war.
—Amy
Mary van der Linden, the wife of a British diplomat during the election of Kennedy and Nixon, finds herself in Washington, DC. Through the social life of Washington, she meets Frank, a reporter working on the election, They begin a love affair. The book chronicles Mary's struggle to make a decision between her alcoholic husband, her children, her lover, and her life in London with her elderly parents.The author does a great job of describing the sights and sound of the streets of New York City in great detail. That was one of the best things about the book.
—Barb
This was a "Back to the Future" experience for me; the era of my youth as a nine to ten year old, height of the developing cold war, immersed in the WWII war weary, the advance of communism and fronts (for New Zealand) in Korea, Malaysia, and Viet Nam emerging -- a powerful and accurate portrayal of the adult world I inherited and was moving with.Initially I anticipated a John Le Carre type spy intrigue, and lack of this was a continuing disappointment until I was gripped by the deja vu unfolding in the love story. And herein lay the deep perceptions so more powerful than indulgence, politics, and war experience; and so more soul searching in living in the here and now what e'er the age.
—Rob Tapper
