The Way I Found Her [Anglais] [Broché]

Lewis Little is less than thrilled when his summer plans change. Instead of staying in England as usual, he and his translator mum are off to Paris, where she has to do a rush job for an author of trashy medieval romances. At 13, the young hero of The Way I Found Her is already full of promise and notions, including the Exploding Peanut Theory of Beauty: "Beauty causes alteration. I'm talking about the beauty of women. Alteration may frequently result in some accident or other." His theory is to prove surprisingly prophetic. But though he thinks his mother's looks may well cause a life-or-death situation, her employer, Valentina Gavrilovich, is equally glam.

Despite his initial misgivings about Paris, Lewis is soon right at home--or as at home as he can be in a huge apartment filled with strange noises coming from supposedly uninhabited rooms. Almost instantly obsessed with Valentina as well as alive to the demands and deep pleasures of language, domestic and foreign, he decides to follow in his mother's footsteps and translate Alain-Fournier's novel of lost happiness, Le Grand Meaulnes. Valentina herself has some cogent things to say about the selfish arts of writing and reading, including, "When you begin a book and you already know in the first line that everything is in the past, this makes you worry so for the character." (A quick return to the opening of The Way I Found Her reveals the phrase, "I don't want to talk about the present.")

As the adults around him carry on with their jobs, romances, and intrigues, Lewis becomes increasingly cynical, particularly when it comes to his mother. As he tells himself, "Parents think they can time everything to suit themselves: they just don't see what they might be burdening you with." His mother's actions, however, become almost as nothing when Valentina suddenly disappears. At this point, The Way I Found Her turns into a curious hybrid--both a coming-of-age story and a thriller--and perhaps Tremain's strengths lie more with the former. Still, this book is an edgy exploration of responsibility, attraction, and betrayal. It is equally a loving evocation of literature's power. Lewis's takes on Le Grand Meaulnes and Crime and Punishment should send many in their direction; many others will turn to Tremain's odd and accomplished Sacred Country and Restoration. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

Tremain takes risks in making the protagonist of her new novel a clever, precocious and inquisitive 13-year-old boy, but this gifted writer (Restoration) succeeds brilliantly in creating an intensely imagined and sophisticated story. Lewis Little and his mother, Alice, leave their home in Devon to spend the summer in Paris, where Alice will translate wealthy Russian expatriate writer Valentina Gavrilovich's latest medieval romance. Initially reluctant, Lewis is smitten by the beauties of Paris and by the bewitching (though 40-ish) Valentina, who comes up to his attic bedroom at night and listens to his halting translation of the classic, neo-romantic Alain-Fournier fable, Le Grand Meaulnes, which, in an ironic plot twist, is to have enormous relevance to Lewis's life. His hormones surging, Lewis develops a crush on Valentina even as he is becoming estranged from Alice, who has embarked on an affair with a roofer called Diderot, a budding philosopher who teaches Lewis the basics of existentialism. Lewis, a bit of a philosopher himself, perceives with resignation the emotional disjunction between his loving but inadequate father and his startlingly beautiful but moody and self-centered mother. As the summer progresses, Lewis makes friends only with adultsABaba, a black maid from Benin; Moinel, the courageous next-door neighbor; Valentina's aged motherAand begins to understand why some adults behave badly, commit adultery, plagiarism and worse. When Valentina suddenly goes missing and the police investigation lags, Lewis draws on his logical mind and keen observational instincts to try to find her, but what seems a grand adventure suddenly brings him into terrible danger. A typical brainy, na?ve adolescent who indulges in romantic fantasies, Lewis is entirely credible as he slowly acquires a sad wisdom and insight. This mesmerizing and immensely affecting novel almost begs for rereading to fully appreciate the subtlety with which Tremain ties the lessons of literature and life into a haunting parable of innocence lost.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

Think A Separate Peace and The Catcher in the Rye, throw in dashes of Collette and Fran?oise Sagan, center all these elements with a genuine mystery at the core, and you have Tremain's wonderfully bittersweet novel of a boy on the brink of manhood, puzzling over life and love as the hot Paris summer sizzles and burns. Lewis Little has come to Paris with Alice, his dazzlingly beautiful mother, to improve his French while she translates best-selling novelist Valentina Gavrilovitch's latest medieval romance into English. Bright Lewis, almost 14, still playing with action figures and dreaming of passion, has an inkling that this summer is the turning point of his life. And change it does, as he falls in love with the glistening, fortyish Valentina. An intriguing cast of characters passes his way, and then Valentina disappears. Lewis's determination to find Valentina will lead to tragedy, but Tremain keeps the reader hooked until the startling ending. This book has the marks of a coming-of-age classic. Restoration, LJ 2/1/90), Tremain's last novel, was short-listed for the Booker Prize and made into a film.
-AJo Manning, Univ. of Miami Lib., Coral Gables, FL
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

...at once a mystery story, a psychological exploration and a novel of ideas. That it should succeed and provoke on these various levels pays high tribute to Tremain's intellect... --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

...a thoroughly engrossing novel... --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

The narrator... a shy yet precocious 13-year-old English lad who accompanies his beautiful, if not very maternal mother, Alice, to Paris. They've been invited to stay at the home of the sultry Russian emigre and successful romance writer Valentina Gavrilovich, whose latest book Alice is supposed to be translating.... With consummate skill, Ms. Tremain modulates the tone of the proceedings as her young hero encroaches on ever more dangerous terrain. By the end, Lewis has lost his innocence: not merely his youthful naivete but also his formerly carefree, untroubled conscience. The irreparable pains and losses of reality are shown to be, not separate from the childhood realm of fantasy and adventure, but the next inevitable step in the process of venturing out into the larger world. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

This brilliantly written and deftly read story introduces Louis Little, a 13-year-old English boy spending the summer in Paris while his mother translates a novel written by a Russian immigrant. Tremain masterfully creates the persona of an extremely bright boy as he observes and learns from the world around him, including a special African maid and various French and Russian acquaintances who enliven the novel. Narrator West both enhances the well-drawn characters and the first-person narration. Because of West's fine ability, the listener enters the very character of a special, yet typical, late-twentieth-century boy. This is an excellent choice for teens and adults. S.G.B. An AUDIOFILE Earphones Award Winner. (c) AudioFile, Portland, Maine --Ce texte fait référence à l'édition Cassette .

Part mystery, part romance, part adolescent fantasy, the latest from Tremain (Sacred Country, 1993, etc.) features a 13-year-old English boy who turns supersleuth when his first love, a much older best-selling writer, is kidnaped in Paris. Young Lewis Little's frostily beautiful mother Alice, a translator, has been summoned to Paris for the summer to live with popular romance writer Valentina Gavrilovich and work on her new book, so Lewis comes along to sharpen his French. Its not his language skills that grow, however, but his lust as hes captivated by the rounded form and exotic qualities of his Russian migr hostess. While Alice begins an affair, leaving him to his own devices, Lewis focuses his overcharged imagination, like a heat-seeking missile, on Valentina. . . but then she disappears. Alice is content to report the matter to the police and resume her liaison, but Lewis sets out to save the woman he loves. Thinking at first that her Russian lover somehow dragged her back to Moscow, Lewis soon picks up another trail by piecing together clues from Valentina's housekeeper, her neighbor, and the files on her computer (which he reads before the police take them away). He gets close enough to her to receive a threat, and when that doesn't deter him, he's abducted himself. Held captive in the same rundown farmhouse as his love, Lewis makes the most of the chance to have her all to himself, talking nonstop with her through a hole in the wall between them while he plans their escape. Unfortunately, his fantasy-come-true in confinement fades in the harsh light of subsequent events. An adolescent world emerges here that is wonderfully complete, melding with adult preoccupations in ways both subtle and seductive. The result is riveting. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.

San Francisco Chronicle Rose Tremain is a master of shifting, provocative tone: she entertains, confronts, amuses, and threatens....In her seventh novel, the fascinated and occasionally dizzy reader reaches an even higher level of sheer enjoyment, all the richer for being mixed with sorrow...Tremain's brilliance in this work is to show what it is to be cherished in life, as only a child may, and what will always be regretted, as only an adult can do.

This is the summer that Lewis Little, precocious thirteen-year-old, is spending in Paris with his beautiful mother, Alice, who is translating the latest medieval romance by Valentina Gavrilovich, the bestselling and exotic Russian émigré. This is the summer that the bewitching Valentina beckons from her sofa, and Lewis discovers an exquisite new world filled with passion and intrigue, set against the alluring backdrop of Paris.

But when Valentina disappears and Lewis takes it upon himself to find her, wondrous secrets suddenly turn sinister. This is the summer that Lewis, caught in a bizarre and dangerous romance, is about to face head-on the perilous force that transforms children into adults.

Rose Tremain is the author of seven novels, including the bestselling Restoration, which received the Sunday Express Book of the Year Award in 1989, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and was made into an Academy Award®-winning film in 1995. Sacred Country won both the James Tait Memorial Prize and the Prix Femina Etranger in France. Ms. Tremain lives in London and Norwich, England.