Amandine

What I liked about this book? Reading it made me feel as if I were seven again, lying on the floor in my parents house on a Sunday afternoon watching a Shirley Temple movie on the black and white TV. The main character, Amandine, is cute, curly haired, self-possessed, just like Shirley. The adult men she meets up with-- a priest and a French farmer--kiss her forehead and have serious talks with her, a child; the women stand-in for her lost mother, hold her hand, adjust her curls give her perfumed baths and refashion their grown up dresses to fit Amandine. They feed her hearty bread loaded with apricot marmalade while holding her hand in front of a roaring fire. She never complains and asks straightforward questions. What does maybe show more someday mean? What is a Jew? What is war? Rather than dance like Shirley, Amandine plays the piano.

Amandine is indeed a charming story about a charming young girl and her complicated family. The writing is as equally charming in this romantic World War II novel. Marlena de Blasi’s lush language, detailed descriptions (oh! the fragrance and food detail will saturate your senses! You can’t help but recognize the writer’s early success as a food writer.), and simple rhythmic sentences dotted with French, Polish and get-out your dictionary English words woo the heart into a sort of nurturing sway that compels you to turn the pages. It is a sanitized war story, so no harsh images stick the mind's eye even though bad things happen.

The novel is set mostly in France. The initial chapters take place in Poland and setup Amandine’s background. She is an aristocrat, granddaughter of a Polish princess and a count who ended his own life and his lover’s life because of the desperation of an extramarital affair: a dead end. Amandine’s mother is the legitimate child of the princess and the count who committed suicide. When she is seventeen, Amandine ‘remains with child’ (De Blasi’s language is at times very stilted) after a fling with a Polish officer; she gives birth to Amandine. Amandine’s grandmother is a bit vindictive. She rushes the infant off, supposedly to Switzerland, to save the reputation and future of her seventeen year-old daughter, who of course was abandoned by the handsome soldier who also happened to be related to the dead woman who had had a love affair with her husband the count..

Rather than Switzerland, the wealthy and beautiful grandmother, who has eyes like a deer, drops the infant Amandine off at a convent in southern France. She deletes all links to Poland to assure no one will ever trace Amandine’s lineage. The beautiful grandmother does leave one hint: an amethyst necklace, which Amandine recovers when she is a young teen.

Everyone at the convent where Amandine lives falls in love with her. Everyone, but the head nun. She is a wicked nun, but not too wicked. Everything in this book is nice, nice, nice. Very nice. Even the suffering. Even the war, even the lack of food. Even the patched clothes and cold baths. Amandine’s hair never wilts. Her charm never turns sour. Her cuteness is always very cute. She speaks up for herself. She defends others. She is never clumsy. She plays the piano and dances like an aristocrat--from blood memory. De Blasi pounds heavy on this theme/fantasy: You can pluck the aristocrat out of her surrounding but you can’t take the good breeding out of the blood.

“...we inherit life much as we do the slope of a cheek or silver in a velvet cushioned-box. And to know that it’s we who then perpetuate the life we inherit--gently or ferociously, according to our natures--repeating the ancestral follies and the traitorous kisses and leaving the legacy nicely intact for those who will come after us.”

Yes, it is a soap opera. Soap operas have fanatic followers. I have a feeling this book will garner the same. Too, Marlena DeBlasi has already carved out a spot for herself in the publishing world. Amandine, her second novel, is not as good as her non-fiction. It is certainly better, not as self-conscious and soppy, as her first novel That Summer in Sicily. Amandine is not an adult love story, as are the author’s living-in-Italy-with-the- Venetian-banker books.

Amandine is a very romantic, breezy, innocent story about a serious time in history.It is a book that you could read out loud to your young daughter on a Sunday afternoon.

Reviewed by CHRISTINE PALAMIDESSI MOORE author of THE VIRGIN KNOWS and THE FIDDLE CASE.

Amandine
Marlena de Blasi
Ballantine Books
324 pages show less

Amandine, an orphan, lives in a French convent for nearly 10 years. When WWII begins she leaves the convent with Solange, the lay-sister who came to the convent in order to take care of her. They head toward the home of Solange’s family in northern France, but encounter the horrors of war on the way.

The beginning of this book was burdened by a slow pace, stilted and purple prose, and detailed interior monologues that did little to develop characters or illuminate the story. Additionally, the italics that were used for these interior monologues were distracting, and seemed to be applied inconsistently later in the book. (Hopefully this will be remedied in the regular published editions.) Amandine’s life at the convent was not very show more interesting, and the abbess’s dislike of her was never fully explained and didn’t seem to have any real bearing on the plot.

However, once she and Solange left the convent (nearly halfway through the book) the pace picked up. Unfortunately, it ended far too quickly and with absolutely no denouement. (The climax occurred in the epilogue!)

I wish some of the potential storylines and minor characters had been more developed, but if you like slow-paced domestic and/or WWII fiction featuring women, then you may like this book. show less

This story wrapped a charm around me. Hauntingly beautiful, Amandine is still floating through my mind.

Born out of wedlock and raised in a convent in France, under the direction of a cold-hearted nun, Amandine has guardianship from a loving soul, Solange, a teenager from the French countryside. They two form a very close bond, and it is their experiences together that spoke most strongly to me. Knowing nothing of her birth parents, Amandine’s heart searches for substitutes; her relationship with her ‘chosen’ father, so tenderly portrayed; with the one she thought was her mother, where she gets a bitter taste of growing-up; and with Solange, who she comes to regard as a loving older sister. I thought the characters were portrayed show more just as they ought to have been, in all the aspects of this story – from Krakow to the convent in France and the French countryside during the years of the war – the characterizations fit the story.

Likewise, the author’s setting took me there. From the Polish mansion to the convent rooms and gardens. From the farm where Solange grew up to their wandering way through France in 1940 and 1941.

My heart took to the layers in this story, written almost light and airy but full of fruit, like the layers of flowering branches of a dogwood tree. The circumstances of her birth and the after effects in that family. Amandine, thinking herself French, yet Polish to the core despite her upbringing. The sacrifices of Solange. The workings of a convent. The privations of a nation during war and what they did to survive and to help one another to survive; the descriptions of the French resistance compel me to read more on that subject. The sadness of being alone, the horridness of war, the hope of a people, the enduring of spirit – the eloquence of a story. Was it fault-free? No. It felt to me as though everything the author did, she could have done more of, for a fuller story. Still, I found her story endearing.

Ahh, and the ending was perfectly lovely. show less

Amandine is an aristocratic child born of scandal in Poland just before World War II. She is born nameless, with a heart condition that means her continued survival is unlikely. Unable to bear the child's presence, Amandine's grandmother sends her to foster in a convent in France, careful to hide all traces of her ancestry bar one, an heirloom necklace. She even tells her daughter, Amandine's mother, that her daughter has died while having surgery as an infant. Instead, miraculously, Amandine grows up dreaming of her mother, finding substitutes along the way, but never losing grasp of the fact that she has a mother who might want her. When World War II breaks out, Amandine and her guardian Solange set out across France, determined to show more find a safe haven in a country torn apart by war, and perhaps to find someone who recognizes the peculiar antique necklace Amandine wears.

In terms of plot, Amandine gets off to a painful start. The first chapters are riddled with the old countess's (the grandmother's) memories and the story of Amandine's birth. There are pages of description and little to no action. Once Amandine gets to the convent, things pick up slightly and it's easy to feel for the poor girl. When she goes to school, she is constantly mocked and also suffers when she has to watch the other girls reunite each weekend with their families. She has her long term guardian, Solange, but she's no substitute for Amandine's mother, no matter how much they love one another. Even as a child, Amandine is full of spirit and determined to defend herself and those she cares about, which makes it very easy for us as readers to care for her in turn. The rest of the characters are very well fleshed out, with believable internal conflicts revealed fairly slowly as the first half goes on. I really felt that this was a book populated by people, not just characters, if that makes sense.

The plot picks up even more once the war arrives and with a few perspective shifts; the contrast between war-ravaged France and Poland and the initial chapters in the convent is striking. De Blasi effortlessly conveys the utter pointlessness of the war and the fragility of life at the time with a few well-written passages. Characters that were built up in the first chapters as complex human beings are struck down with barely a moment's notice. The author's writing is beautifully descriptive and I got a real feel for convent life and the French countryside, which makes the chapters about war even harder to read in comparison. And throughout, I was constantly hoping for Amandine to find her mother, which adds an extra layer of tension to the book's concluding chapters.

Despite a slow start, Amandine revealed itself as a complex, engaging historical novel with strong characters and a distinct French atmosphere. It's the perfect choice for the historical fiction reader craving a thoughtful read. show less

An absolutely lovely book. The story of war, of a lost child, loneliness, secrets, and innocence. De Blasi, who has up until focused her talents on non-fiction, has written a novel of exceptional beauty. It offers the reader the rare pleasures of wonderful characters, intriguing plot, deliciously rendered settings, all combined with perfect atmosphere and tone.

Amandine, the lost child, born out of wedlock into an aristocratic family in Krakow in 1931, is banished by her grandmother to a remote convent in the French countryside, cared for by a young governess named Solange.

Treated as a pampered pet by the nuns and an irritating humiliation by the Mother Superior, Blasi paints a terrific portrait of what it means to yearn for belonging show more in a hostile world. The sense of being an outcast is reinforced and elevated when, during WWII, Solange and Amandine flee north to Solange's family home. We follow them through a dangerous, harrowing journey, both physically and psychologically.

The narratives shifts from Amandine back to her grandmother, who regrets her actions, and Amandine's mother, whose life has taken some interesting turns of its own.

It's a dramatic book, and the conclusion is utterly satisfying. I was, frankly, concerned about how De Blasi would handle it, but I needn't have worried, for she proves masterful.

The prose, as well as the story itself, is delightful. Full of wonderful sense details and with a lilt to it, a sort of music, that places the story firmly in European territory, while never feeling false or precious.

Highly recommended. show less

In Krakow in 1931, a baby girl is conceived out of wedlock. The child’s grandmother, a countess, believes that she is protecting her daughter when she claims that the baby didn’t survive. In truth, the countess deposits the infant at a remote convent in the French countryside, leaving her with a great sum of money and in the care of a young governess named Solange. Solange names the baby Amandine, and they form a special bond. But even Solange’s love cannot protect Amandine from the disdain of the abbess and the convent girls. Eventually Solange and Amandine set out for Solange’s childhood home in northern France. But what should have been a two-day journey becomes a years-long odyssey across Occupied France.

I found this novel show more slow to start. DeBlasi gives us considerable emotional background on Amandine’s grandmother (the countess) and the reasoning she uses to convince herself she is doing the right thing, the ONLY thing she can in these circumstances. The narrator changed from chapter to chapter, and internal dialogue was printed in italics, which I found distracting when used for several pages in a row. However, once the characters were well established and Amandine began to show her own personality as a young child I got caught up in her story.

The shame and secrecy of illegitimacy was a heavy burden in this era, and unfortunately, it was frequently laid on the shoulders of the innocent child. Whether it was because they truly believed it in her best interests, or because they feared the money would be cut off, the abbess and bishop conspired to keep any clue as to her origins from Amandine.

War is not pretty and deBlasi does nothing to soften the horrors of the years – deprivation, cold, hunger, fear. Still, despite no encouragement and downright demands that she forget about her unknown family, the child clings to the hope that her mother will somehow find her and they will be reunited. Amandine also exhibits a rare grace and dignity for one so young. How she manages to hold her head high despite all the terrors visited up on her in the convent and on the run is beyond me. To say that she is treated cruelly is an understatement; one scene in particular is very distressing. And she has an amazing capacity to forgive. She seems to intuit the motives, fears, and dreams of the adults around her and accept their actions as necessary, forgiving them for not being able to see another way.

About half-way through the book I had an inkling of how it might end. I was close. But deBlasi’s ending is both abrupt and inconclusive. This is the author’s only novel; her other works are nonfiction. I wonder if she is working on a sequel to this book. show less

Heartbreakingly beautiful. I have not read a book before this that touched me deeply enough to not bring me to tears just once but several times. A magnificent blend of the central story of the orphan girl Amandine against the back drop of World War II that culminates into the perfect dance. Who will see and feel the atrocities of war not just through the eyes of a young girl but through the eyes of those who fought against them. The feelings the story evokes will haunt you long after you have finished. For myself I do wish that there was a bit more to the ending. The author alludes to what will take place yet allows the reader to then use their imagination. There is nothing wrong with this type of ending but I admit that I am a reader show more who likes it all "spelled" out for me. I want to know for sure what takes place not decide what I would like to take place. show less