The Lacemaker - Softcover

Lowell Blair

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0345363531 ISBN 13: 9780345363534

Publisher: Ballantine Books, 1990

Synopsis

In seventeenth-century France, a young woman, Gilonne Perdriel, is forced to carry on the lacemaking tradition into which she was born and which crippled her mother and grandmother, but her talent and beauty soon captivate many men

About this title

Language Notes:

Text: English, French (translation)

From Publishers Weekly:

A wealth of historical detail buttresses this novel set in the lacemaking capital of Alecon, France, during the mid-1600s. Gilonne Perdriel, daughter of a nobleman who will not acknowledge her and a young lacemaker who died soon after giving birth, is apprenticed at five to the trade that blinded her grandmother. While Gilonne and her friend Michanteau are locked away from the world learning the arduous steps involved in crocheting lace collars and flounces, the persecution of Protestants gathers deadly momentum with the blessing of the Catholic court of Louis XIV. At the height of this religious strife, the girls are freed to attempt to eke out a living. Beautiful Gilonne secretly marries a rich Protestant, but pines for Ogier, an arrogant servant from her father's estate who makes his fortune in New France and returns to Europe as a nobleman. When her husband is killed, Gilonne and Michanteau build a thriving lacemaking business aided by a clutch of eccentrics ranging from elderly, gossipy blind women to bickering artists. While the romance tends toward sugary excess and the prose is too often weighty and stiff, this French bestseller is ultimately as enticing and intricate as the gossamer lace it describes.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Publication date: 1990
• ISBN 10: 0345363531
• ISBN 13: 9780345363534
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 417