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Audiobook11 hours
Victorine
Written by Catherine Texier
Narrated by Josephine Bailey
Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars
2.5/5
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About this audiobook
In this lush, lyrical, and marvelously evocative novel, Catherine Texier takes a mystery from her family's past and draws from it a portrait of a remarkable woman-her great-grandmother Victorine. A young schoolteacher in a quiet province in France, Victorine had married and had two children. But when she falls desperately in love, she makes a startling choice, leaving her family for her lover and a new life in Indochina.
On a single day in 1940, as Victorine reflects on her past, we travel back with her, from the willow-lined canals of her childhood home in Vendée to sun-drenched days and languorous nights along the Mekong River at the dawn of the twentieth century. Hers is an unforgettable story of adventure and self-discovery-of a woman's struggle between duty and independence, tradition and freedom, longing and regret.
On a single day in 1940, as Victorine reflects on her past, we travel back with her, from the willow-lined canals of her childhood home in Vendée to sun-drenched days and languorous nights along the Mekong River at the dawn of the twentieth century. Hers is an unforgettable story of adventure and self-discovery-of a woman's struggle between duty and independence, tradition and freedom, longing and regret.
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Reviews for Victorine
Rating: 2.476192857142857 out of 5 stars
2.5/5
21 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5This is another book that gets a half of a star only as a placeholder -- shouldn't even get that much in my opinion. This book sounded great from its description (apparently inspired by the author's great-grandmother) and had so much potential as a work of historical fiction. Instead it was 300 pages of Victorine dithering between staying with her husband or staying with her lover. I honestly didn't like her enough as a character to care what she decided in the end.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5My rating is an average. I would give the first 9/10 of the book 4 stars and the last 1/10 zero stars.Victorine, married with two children, leaves an unhappy marriage and escapes to Indochina with her childhood sweetheart. They build a life there in the hot, humid weather, exotic flowers and swirls of opium smoke. Then, after 10 years, she goes back to France, back to her husband. She starts out planning to finally end things with him - ask for a divorce, explain things to her children - but she stays, has another child, lives out her life. The frustrating thing about the book is that 95% of the story deals with her decision to leave and her life in Indochina; only a small fraction at the very end deals with her return. There is no mention of how she was received by her old friends and neighbors, how she explained her absence, how she made peace - if she made peace - with her children. She and her husband had another child, but they also separated: there is virtually no explanation for that and there are no details, no explanations. She continued to see her childhood sweetheart after her marriage broke up - only a few brief paragraphs explain all of this. Although she saw him every summer from the time she and her husband separated until he died at age 62 (only 3 years before the story takes place), there is no explanation of how this started, why it continued, why they never married. If you like a story with closure and all the loose ends wrapped up, avoid this book.