The House in Paris
Ratings3
Average rating4
15
Ratings3
Average rating4
One of Elizabeth Bowen’s most artful and psychologically acute novels, The House in Paris is a timeless masterpiece of nuance and atmosphere, and represents the very best of Bowen’s celebrated oeuvre. When eleven-year-old Henrietta arrives at the Fishers’ well-appointed house in Paris, she is prepared to spend her day between trains looked after by an old friend of her grandmother’s. Henrietta longs to see a few sights in the foreign city; little does she know what fascinating secrets the Fisher house itself contains. For Henrietta finds that her visit coincides with that of Leopold, an intense child who has come to Paris to be introduced to the mother he has never known. In the course of a single day, the relations between Leopold, Henrietta’s agitated hostess Naomi Fisher, Leopold’ s mysterious mother, his dead father, and the dying matriarch in bed upstairs, come to light slowly and tantalizingly. And when Henrietta leaves the house that evening, it is in possession of the kind of grave knowledge usually reserved only for adults.
Reviews with the most likes.
It starts with a young girl arriving at a house in Paris for the day, just a layover on a trip she is taking. A young boy also arrives, and he is to meet his mother.
And then the boy opens a purse, and takes out letters inside, and reads them, and suddenly, the characters are revealed to have secrets upon secrets, all tied together, and bound up in the house in Paris.
It's a beautifully written story, carefully placed and plotted out, so that in the end the reader is left to marvel at the marvelous workmanship behind the book. The characters are true and yet mysterious in their every word, and the actions the characters take feel both destined and inexplicable.
It's a delight of a book, and I'm so glad I read it, my first by this author.
