On Green Dolphin Street: A Novel
1 journaler for this copy...
Received in box of books from a family member.
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The bestselling author of Birdsong and Charlotte Gray delivers an enthralling, vibrantly evocative novel set in America in 1960, when the country stood poised between the paranoia of the Cold War and the ebullience of the New Frontier.
Faulks' heroine is Mary Van der Linden, a pretty, reserved Englishwoman whose husband, Charlie, is posted to the British embassy in Washington. One night at a cocktail party Mary meets Frank Renzo, a reporter who has covered stories from the fall of Dienbienphu to the Emmett Till murder trial in Mississippi. Slowly, reluctantly, they fall in love. Their ensuing affair, in all its desperate elation, plays out against a backdrop that ranges from the jazz clubs of Greenwich Village to the smoke-filled rooms of the Kennedy campaign. A romance in the grand tradition that is also a neon-lit portrait of America at its apogee, On Green Dolphin Street is Sebastian Faulks at the peak of his powers.
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The bestselling author of Birdsong and Charlotte Gray delivers an enthralling, vibrantly evocative novel set in America in 1960, when the country stood poised between the paranoia of the Cold War and the ebullience of the New Frontier.
Faulks' heroine is Mary Van der Linden, a pretty, reserved Englishwoman whose husband, Charlie, is posted to the British embassy in Washington. One night at a cocktail party Mary meets Frank Renzo, a reporter who has covered stories from the fall of Dienbienphu to the Emmett Till murder trial in Mississippi. Slowly, reluctantly, they fall in love. Their ensuing affair, in all its desperate elation, plays out against a backdrop that ranges from the jazz clubs of Greenwich Village to the smoke-filled rooms of the Kennedy campaign. A romance in the grand tradition that is also a neon-lit portrait of America at its apogee, On Green Dolphin Street is Sebastian Faulks at the peak of his powers.
An honest, and therefore heart-wrenching, portrayal of infidelity, family responsibility, morality, and individuality. The characters are placed in a slow-paced novel chock-a-block with references to the Nixon vs. Kennedy campaign season and other scenes of life in New York, Washington, London, and (briefly) Moscow at the time. The characterizations in the book were wonderful--I definitely came to know and feel for these characters. And most of the time the writing was good. But the book moved slowly and the characters rarely were able to get out of their own heads long enough to think about what they were doing. The smoke-filled, alcohol-drenched parties were both fun to read and mind-dullingly boring. I wanted to love this book, and instead found it more like comfort food--enjoyable, but leaves one feeling heavy and dull afterward.
