A haunting, rewarding memory novel about a man who goes
in search of himself and learns the true meaning of love.
Claire King launches her beautiful
second novel with a riveting scene on a train bound for Toulouse, France, in
May of 1968. A mysterious young woman goes into sudden, violent labor. Sharing
her train compartment is a midwife who, seeing her distress, offers help. But
by the time this brutal, powerful scene is over, the woman--with no
identification--will lose her life giving birth to a baby boy, who will be
saved by the midwife, a married woman unable to have children, who will become
the baby's mother.
What follows is the
story of Baptiste Molino, the infant, now a middle-aged bachelor, a man raised
in the French countryside. Baptiste has lived a good--yet rather
uneventful--life. He thinks he is fulfilled and happy until Amandine Rousseau,
an attractive woman wearing green shoes, shows up at his door. During their
first meeting, Amandine tells Baptiste she wants "something that makes me
feel alive. Joy, passion, despair, something to remember or something to
regret.... Perhaps after all this time, what I really want... is to fall in
love." As Baptiste learns more about Amandine and her life, he feels
challenged, and he begins to question himself: Is there something missing from
his life? Is he truly happy? Amandine's presence causes ripples that turn into
waves of memories that encourage Baptiste to go on a labyrinthine journey in
search of himself.
King (The Night Rainbow) thoughtfully plumbs the
tangled depths of the human psyche, the meaning of life and the evolution of
love in its many incarnations.
Bloomsbury USA, $27.00
Hardcover, 9781632865380, 384 pages
Publication
Date: December 6, 2016
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NOTE: This
review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read
this review on Shelf Awareness:
Reader's Edition (January 3,
2017), link HERE