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Night sky was black and then there was blood, morning crack of light on the edge of the earth. The crimson spill sent the bright stars to fade, hills stepping out of shadow and clouds finding flesh. First rain of day and music it made of the land.

Beyond the Book    

At BookBrowse, we go 'beyond the book' to explore interesting aspects relating to each book we feature. Here is a recent "Beyond the Book" feature for A Possible Life by Sebastian Faulks. 

 

 

 

   

   

Sebastian Faulks's French Connection

It's no surprise that Sebastian Faulks might consider himself a Francophile. After all, a good number of his 14 books are set (or at least partially set) in France, including his three most famous novels, known as the "French trilogy": The Girl at the Lion d'Or; Birdsong; and Charlotte Gray, which in 2001, was made into a movie starring Cate Blanchette.

In 1961, when Faulks was eight, he first visited France with his family. He recalls in an interview, "...we stayed in Deauville, which was an old-fashioned resort in Normandy, in a boarding house... Very nice food, rather formal and there was something, I suppose, about France, even then, that did seem to me attractive or different in some way."

As a young man, in the year before he went off to university, Faulks returned to France and lived in Paris for three months and worked at a campsite in the Vend�e region. However, it wasn't until he came back again in his mid-20s (this time with a car) that the country began to take hold of him. As he explains, "I think there was something about these places, you know, in northern France I'm talking about really, where these small towns and villages just excited me in a sense that the people who lived there had hidden lives, hidden passions, long, long, untold secrets. And they gave me a desire to write. They intrigued me, that part of my brain which deals with creative things would suddenly light up." In time he realized that he also loved the palpable sense of history found in France. "[I]t was like going back into the 1930s or even into the 1920s. It was like driving back into the past and I do think... it was that that really excited me about France."

In addition to the evocative landscape, Faulks acknowledges that French art (e.g. Impressionist painters), architecture, music (Ravel and Faur�), and literature - in particular, the works of Zola, Stendhal, Balzac, and Marcel Proust - have influenced his work. "[T]here's no doubt that the domestic detail of Proust was, as well the whole theme of Proust's novel, a catalyst for something in me." He began researching French history, and in 1984, after his first novel A Trick of the Light had been published, he decided "to go the whole hog and actually set a book in France... And this book became The Girl at the Lion D'Or. And in the course of writing it he says he "read quite a lot about French history of the 1930s."

More than anything else, however, Faulks points out that the most valuable thing France has offered him is a change in perspective; as he puts it, it "enabled me to become a writer by getting me out of my own culture".

By Elena Spagnolie

Above is BookBrowse's backstory to A Possible Life.
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Publication Date: Oct 2013  

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From the Jacket

After her grandmother Arlette's death, Betty is finally ready to begin her life. She had forfeited university, parties, boyfriends, summer jobs-all the usual preoccupations of a woman her age-in order to care for Arlette in their dilapidated, albeit charming home on the English island of Guernsey. Her will included a beneficiary unknown to Betty and her family, a woman named Clara Pickle who presumably could be found at a London address. Now, having landed on a rather shabby street corner in '90s Soho, Betty is determined to find the mysterious Clara. She's ready for whatever life has to throw her way. Or so she thinks...

In 1920s bohemian London, Arlette De La Mare is starting her new life in a time of postwar change. Beautiful and charismatic, she is soon drawn into the hedonistic world of the Bright Young People. But two years after her arrival in London, tragedy strikes and she flees back to her childhood home and remains there for the rest of her life.

As Betty navigates the ups and downs of city life and begins working as a nanny for a rock star tabloid magnet, her search for Clara leads her to a man-a stranger to Betty, but someone who meant the world to her grandmother. Will the secrets of Arlette's past help Betty find her own way to happiness in the present?

A rich detective story and a captivating look at London then and now, Before I Met You is an unforgettable novel about two very different women, separated by seventy years, but united by big hearts and even bigger dreams.

 

Reviews  

"Told in chapters that alternate between 1919-21 and 1995, Jewell unfolds each detail of Arlette's secret past with impeccable timing." - Publishers Weekly

"Family dynamics, the search for love and personal meaning, and the simple yet evocative daily motions of each woman keep the pages turning. Sure to be a popular title." - Booklist

"Beautiful, moving, and unputdownable." - Jojo Moyes, author of Me Before You and Windfallen

"What a delightful novel! I was truly absorbed by Betty and Arlette. A wonderful perspective on the curiosity, confidences and deep affection that can exist between the generations. The story is ingeniously and seamlessly balanced within two different time frames, and the care Lisa Jewell devotes to the sense of place and the detailed fabric of each age gives her book a richness that  both charms and moves." - Juliet Nicolson, author of Abdication and The Great Silence: Britain From the Shadow of the First World War to the Dawn of the Jazz Age

"Jewell's many fans should eagerly embrace this story about two different women living in two different times whose lives converge in the most unexpected way... Family

"Lisa Jewell's latest escapist love story is heartbreakingly good." - Marie Claire (UK)

"GH favourite Lisa Jewell leaves the chick-lit tag firmly behind with Before I Met You, a poignant story about a young woman uncovering her grandmother's bohemian life in 1920s London - and finding her own place in the world in the process." - Good Housekeeping (UK))

"This is another emotional clever read from Jewell, beautifully written and populated with carefully constructed characters you'll be rooting for as you race through it... I couldn't put it down." - Sara Lawrence, Daily Mail (London)    

5 people will each win a paperback copy of Before I Met You.  

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