**THE author's love affair with Louisiana continues in this 1958 romance of the rice and sugar country during the Twenties. A lineal descendant of Frances Parkinson Keyes' last novel, "Blue Camellia," the story of Victorine concerns the return of a cosmopolitan, half-Jewish, half-Roman Catholic girl to Louisiana with her father, a successful merchant and dress designer who has come home to die.**
***Carrie Dalby (Nov 12, 2018 - 4 of 5 Stars) really liked it. Shelves: family-saga, gothic, historical:*** Excellent Southern Gothic family saga. It continues the story began in BLUE CAMELLIA. It's been over a year since I've read that one so I didn't recall everything, but enough was hinted at in this to remind me--and be enough explanation for those who haven't read the other. Keyes is a masterful storyteller.
***Lisa James (Feb 23, 2014 - 3 of 5 Stars) liked it - Shelves: historical-fiction:*** Love, murder, & long held family secrets in the rice country bayous of Louisiana. Very well done, & a really good story :) I really liked the fact that the author, in doing the dialogue, stayed true to the native patois & way of speaking for the time as well :)
***Victoria (Jan 22, 2019): This is a sequel to 'Blue Camilla'*** although it is completely different. Rather than weaving a family story into the history of an area and an industry, this emphasizes romance and a murder mystery. I still enjoyed it and couldn't wait to find out who did it. I don't know why this is recorded as having been read twice, I only read it once.
***Rosemary Morris (Oct 29, 2016 - 5 of 5 Stars) it was amazing:*** Victorine by Frances Parkinson Keyes The sequel to Blue Camelia, Victorine, is set in Louisiana during the 1st and 2nd World Wars.
When Prosper Villac a rice miller, bought a pair of Gold Slippers for Titine, a singer in a night club, he could neither have foreseen her murder nor that he would become a suspect. On the verge of his engagement to Victorine, whose grandfather brought her to his house in Louisiana after many years in Europe, Prosper curses himself for his brief involvement with Titine.
Victorine ends with a satisfying twist in the tale which takes the reader by surprise. Parkinson Keyes novels always sweep me back into the past with their vibrant characters and the interesting descriptions of the Southern States in the U.S.A in times gone by. Re-reading Victorine after many years has inspired me to re-read Parkinson Keyes other novels, including old favourites such as The River Road and Larry Vincent.
***Nan (Apr 22, 2020 - 4 of 5 Stars) really liked it:*** a little dated perhaps, but a good story. May help to have an appreciation of southern Louisiana.
***Judy (Mar 18, 2011 - 2 of 5 Stars) it was ok. Recommends it for: Fans of historical romance novels
Shelves: 20th-century-fiction, books-from-1958***
I thought I was done with Frances Parkinson Keyes bestsellers after completing my 1957 reading list, but it turns out there was one more to go. She went on writing novels until 1970 but Victorine, at #10 in 1958, was her final bestseller. She is not too bad but not good enough to add to my list of authors to follow.
Victorine is a sequel to Blue Camellia which you can find in my list of books from 1957. It was one of her better novels and is set in Louisiana during the time when rice was first developed as a crop there. In that novel Lavinia, the heroine, had two children who in Victorine are grown and ready to get married. Prosper, the son, falls in love with Victorine, an impossibly perfect woman. But Proper's fling with a Creole dancer at the local tavern involves him as a suspect when the dancer is murdered.
The solving of the murder mystery keeps the story going and saves it from being another dull romance novel
***Jamie (Nov 06, 2012 - 1 of 5 Stars) did not like it:* I did not finish this book; I read 200 pages of it and decided I could return it to the library without knowing the end**. I really liked Frances Parkinson Keyes' other book (Dinner at Antoine's). This book is not nearly as good. It has one of those terrible romances in which the two parties hate each other and then overnight love each other for no reason at all. They then share ridiculously over the top pronouncements of love in the face of adversity. It's all just a little too much. And by a little, I mean a lot.
***Katrina (Apr 23, 2011 - 3 of 5 Stars) liked it: Recommends it for: Helen and Anneliese***
I found this paperback while visiting my grampa in Escondido. Loved it! There is nothing like an old romance novel to suck you in. Just turn off your literary critique button before opening this book and take it for what it is: "Hypnotic," Chicago Tribune and "...permeated with an element of mystery," Burlington Free Press.
***Judy (Mar 09, 2016 - 2 of 5 Stars) ''it was ok'' Shelves: fic-historical-us:*** Up until I read this, I thought all of the works by Keyes were wonderful. This one was a disappointment. Not much to it. A soap opera in book form.
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