The Girl At The Lion D'Or (1999) - Plot & Excerpts
This is a historical romance novel, the first of Sebastian Faulks’ ‘French Trilogy’, the other two being ‘Birdsong’ and ‘Charlotte Grey’, and all three are set in France, during the Great War, the Inter-War period and the Second World War. This novel, being the first he wrote in this trilogy, is set during the Inter-War period, the year being 1936 and the time of the Popular Front Govt. of Leon Blum. It is basically about a young Woman called Anne, her life and illicit affair with a rich married Lawyer called Hartmann. Its quite a short novel, but its main themes are those of love & despair, set within an historical wrapper which gives a small insight into French Society during the 1930s, detailing through the lives of the various characters in the book the conflict with Germany, French internal social divisions, life under the Popular Front Govt. (mentioning the paid holidays they introduced etc), and, for a book if its size (~250 pages), gives a strong historical feel of the time. Anne is basically a young Woman who travels from Paris to a small coastal village to work in a hotel, The Lion d’Or, as a waitress and general worker. It is clear near the beginning of the book that she has some underlying issues, which are well suppressed in her life, but the dreams she suffers from are disturbing to her. Whilst working at The Lion d’Or she meets Hartmann, a wealthy Jewish Lawyer who lives in a manor house near the village. She immediately falls for him and tries her hardest to seduce and eventually succeeds in getting a part time job working as a maid for his house. Slowly their relationship develops, Hartmann finding Anne alternative accommodation, having a weekend away together without his wife finding out and eventually, during this weekend, making love together, thus cementing their relationship.Both Anne and Hartmann have issues – this is made very clear early on. Anne, trusting her new lover, slowly explains her past and it is not a pretty one. The effect the Great War had on France controls this book and its characters, made all too clear with Annes problems and to a lesser extent, but no more profound, Hartmann too. Anne lost both her parents during the conflict, her Father because he shot an Officer during the time of the mutiny of the French Army in 1917 (and was subsequently himself shot), her Mother as a direct consequence of being victimised by the village they lived in after the war because he was turned into a public scapegoat by the press. How nasty they can become towards victims. She committed suicide as a result of both the loss of her husband and the subsequent abuse in her village. Anne was brought up in Paris by a foster father, but her memories of seeing her Mother dead, and the loss of her Father and the resulting abuse the family received is only opened up with Hartmann. I think he becomes more paternal towards her from her opening up about her past, this is clear, and I suppose the reasons Anne falls totally in love with him is in part due to the fact he is the only person she has ever opened up to, as she had always been evasive about her past. I found Hartmann to be a confusing character; it’s clear, compared to his friends in the novel, that he is no womaniser, and his relationship with Anne comes as something natural for him – he has fallen in love. His wife, Christine, probably is the only real victim, but she is so upper class that my sympathies lied with Anne (well, she is the focus of the book), but we do understand Hartmann’s problems with his marriage – Christine having miscarried and can no longer bear children seems to be the main underlying factor in their distance as a couple, or at least I got that impression. Towards the end of the book, Christine hears rumours about her husband’s relationship with Anne, and this seems to be the main reason why Hartmann finishes the affair. Selfish of him certainly, and he is the only one as well who knows the effect this will have on Anne, who has being rejected almost a third time; the loss of her parents, her foster father and now the only person she has probably only really fallen in love with all her life. He is as much disturbed by the end of the affair as Anne is I think, because he knows deep down what damage this will cause her and the life she had made in that coastal village. And it does cause her damage, quite severely. She ends up leaving the coastal town, her job and apartment, and travel back to Paris. Walking the streets in a distressed state, she ends up in a garden in a rich area of the Capital, finds a knife in a garden, and almost tries to commit suicide. But she survives and lives another day. She would probably grow up to be a strong Woman. I liked this book. In some ways, it has more depth to it than Charlotte Grey, but not quite the same as Birdsong (which, in its own rights, is a classic novel). I liked the way it was wrapped up in the fortunes of the Popular Front of 1936/37 (with Hartmann trying to save a minister of that Govt. in the book who later also commits suicide over wrongful allegations), the way also how the Great War of 1914-1918 shaped all the characters in this novel (and probably the whole of French Society of this period), really coming into its own with the relationship of the protagonists. I recommend.
There's something different about this book for sure. It's set up as a stereotypical love story but develops into something with a more grounded, gritty feel. It's a relatively short book - only 250 pages long, and from experience with other short stories by Sebastian Faulks ('A Possible Life'), I was sceptical about how developed the story would be. Previously, I found Faulks skipped over essential events and rushed what could have been a memorable story. However, The Girl at the Lion d'Or is something quite different. The book follows a waitress, Anne, who moves to an unremarkable French Town. She carries with her a sense of guilt ridden abandonment and appears to have always been betrayed by those who should have been pillars of support. The idea of being powerless to fate is key in the novel.So far, so depressing - right? Well, it has lighter moments, but on the whole this novel maintains a murky atmosphere - France is on the brink of WW2 and this fear creeps into the story. Anne's relationship with an unavailable man drives the novel, it is clear from the beginning that it'll never be, but there is a naive sense of hope and intrigue that causes a slight questioning of whether they could be together.Overall this is a sorrowful novel, but I really don't think you should let that put you off! If anything it is likely to be a more realistic - it takes a step away from some of the slightly more gushy novels set in 1930s France. I did enjoy this story and was surprised at some of the cut throat reviews on this book! Faulks works this story well - my only complaint? The ending was a little rushed - a considerable amount seemed to happen in the last 50 pages.. C'mon Mr Faulks, keep the pace!
What do You think about The Girl At The Lion D'Or (1999)?
This is the 2nd of 3 books of Faulks' French trilogy that I have read. I found myself being compelled to read it, yet actually wanting to put it down for a while. It felt way too personal, like I was reading someone's diary in a manner of speaking. Faulks seems to be able to get inside his characters' minds, where thoughts are often messy and incomplete and puzzling. Unlike Birdsong, he does not wrap it up and put a bow on it.......Not light reading and don't read it in the winter-time when it's gray and cold.
—Christine
A very "French" novel, not so much in the setting - a small bourgeois town close to the ocean - but in the introspective dissection of the lives of ordinary people living their ordinary lives. I don't know if "existentialism" is the right word, but I was reminded of the works of Zola, Balzac or Tolstoy. To campare Anne from the Lion d'Or with Anna Karenina is perhaps a little forced, but that is what her passion for life and her tragic condition evoked in me.I was also detecting an Erich Maria Remarque flavor, especially of Arc de Triomphe, because the novel deals with the aftermath of the carnage in the trenches of Verdun or Somme. This is the tale of the survivors, those that participated in the trenches and those that waited at home for husbands or children who never came back. This is a sad and disturbing book, but not quite as defeatist as the Remarque tale I mentioned. Faulks allows his characters their moment in the sunshine, waves before them the possibility of redemption through love or through the occasional kindness of strangers. He has a delicate touch and a deft hand at sketching believable secondary characters in a couple of phrases. The major theme of the story is given in a paragraph at the beginning of the story, right after the memorable entrance of a solitary figure, bereft on a dark, empty, rainswept railroad station. When the good Lord made this world from the infinite number of possibilities open to him and selected - from another limitless pool - the kind of misery that his creatures should be subject to, he selected only one model. The moment of bereavement. Death, desertion, betrayal - all the same thing. The child sent from his parents, the widow, the lover abandoned - they all feel the same emotion which, in its most extreme form, finds expression in a cry. Anne has a dark secret in her life, one that has made her taciturn and wary of other people. But she also has an inner strength, a zest for life that transcends the poverty and the tediousness of her humble condition. If anyone deserved a lucky break in their life, it would be her, and with every page I read I hoped the author will be kind to her by the end.I'm not going to tell you in this review if she did or not, but I highly recommend you read and find out about her fate.--- spoiler alert ---There's a disturbing rape scene near the end of the book that the author used to great effect in order to illustrate how it is not the selfish, inconsiderate bastards that inflict the most harm in a realtionship, but the sensitive, nice guys who let you fall in love with them and then break your heart claiming they do it for your own good.
—Algernon
I've read two novels by Faulks now (after giving up on his Jeeves book), both of them historical romances, both involving adulterous affairs, this one in 1936 France, the other in 1960 America. Both also involve sympathetic people trying to deal with emotions they don't fully understand and trying to do the right thing in impossible situations. In this one the cheated-on character was the wife; in the other it was the husband. Part of this one was the gradual realization of how WW I damaged these characters, even though only one was directly involved, and he only for a short time. If Faulks had dwelt on this from the start it would have seemed cliched; but since he very slowly allowed parts of the back stories to be revealed, it takes on unforgettable significance. The settings are beautifully described, the characters seem completely real. I was particularly taken by this passage spoken by the husband in the affair to a friend, as he is gradually coming to realize there is more going on in his emotions than he had allowed himself to think. He remembers hearing a Beethoven string quartet and being so moved that he wept. "There was a feeling in the music greater than any emotion I had ever experienced or even imagined. It was frightening. It wasn't the sadness or the triumph of a symphony, or the exhilaration of something classical, it was colder and far greater...I went back four times to hear that piece of music. And I couldn't bear it. I listened to it again and again, because I was trying to get on top of it, to comprehend it, but I couldn't. The power of the feeling in it was too great...Until that time I'd thought that every feeling could be taken on and understood. I thought it was a challenge--that any emotion could be assimilated if you tried hard enough. This was the first time I realized my mind was just not large enough to comprehend properly what some other people have felt." This was the first time in the book that I sensed where it was going to go, and how wrenching and difficult the outcome might be for all concerned. It's a rare book that makes me sympathize with all the characters as much as this one did.
—Jon
