On Green Dolphin Street
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2.8 • 5 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Focusing on a richly significant time in our recent past, Sebastian Faulks, the bestselling author of Birdsong and Charlotte Gray, has written his first novel set in America. The year is 1960—a fascinating moment of transition in our country, when the comfortable Eisenhower years were drawing to a close and the ruthlessly competitive Nixon/Kennedy presidential campaign signaled the beginning of a starkly different decade.
Mary van der Linden has recently moved from London to Washington, D.C., with her two children and her loving, admired husband, Charlie, who is posted to the British Embassy. Nearly forty, Mary has spent a lifetime as a loyal daughter, wife and mother. But in this year of so much change, she feels compelled to break away from her familiar world and is drawn to the freedom of New York City, which is effervescent with parties, jazz, three- martini lunches, girls in their summer dresses and men in their Sinatra hats and big ties. Greenwich Village is still charmingly bohemian, and Miles Davis’s hit tune “On Green Dolphin Street” is playing everywhere. Mary finds a hotel room in New York and then finds a lover, while back in Washington her husband drinks to forget the demands of his job, the absence of his wife and the Cold War paranoia that has overtaken the capital.
Faulks breaks new ground with this novel: It is a love story, not a war story, and it is set in America rather than France. Yet readers of his two previous bestselling novels will recognize the close focus of the historical setting, the unforgettable characters and the gathering emotional power of the narrative. On Green Dolphin Street is a dramatic, tremendously moving novel that is certain to extend the American audience for this prodigiously talented author’s work.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Jazz fans may recognize the title of this tepid novel about a love triangle set in 1960, but the reference (to a 1960 Miles Davis hit) will do little to enhance their appreciation of this disappointing work, the fifth novel from British writer Faulks (Birdsong; The Girl at the Lion d'Or; Charlotte Gray). Moving away from his trademark early 20th-century French settings, the writer tries out his meticulous brand of melancholy romance on mid-20th-century America. Charles van der Linden, a British diplomat posted to Washington, is in a serious slump: his investments are losing money, political suspicions poison his career and he increasingly turns to alcohol for solace. His gentle wife, Mary, is holding things together, but when the couple's two children must be sent to school in England, she finds herself at a loose end. On a visit to New York, she is shown the sights by newspaper reporter Frank Renzo, and the two embark on a passionate affair. The outline of the story is unremarkable, but it does have dramatic potential: will Mary leave her disaffected, alcoholic husband and her beloved children to join her soul mate Frank in his quasi-bohemian Greenwich Village life? But Faulks doesn't generate the intensity he is known for, relying instead on unconvincing interior monologues and flashbacks to flesh out the three characters. He has clearly done his homework on the period details of current events abound, along with minute descriptions of what the characters eat, drink and smoke but the descriptions are just filler. The novel feels unformed and inert, with reportage substituting for imagination, and never reveals the heart-wrenching power that characterized Birdsong. 10-city author tour.
Customer Reviews
Fantastic!
What a great writer. I could not put this down.