On Green Dolphin Street: A Novel - Hardcover

Faulks, Sebastian

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0375502254 ISBN 13: 9780375502255

Publisher: Random House, 2002

Synopsis

Focusing on a richly significant time in our recent past, Sebastian Faulks, the bestselling author of Birdsong and Charlotte Gray, has written his first novel set in America. The year is 1960—a fascinating moment of transition in our country, when the comfortable Eisenhower years were drawing to a close and the ruthlessly competitive Nixon/Kennedy presidential campaign signaled the beginning of a starkly different decade.

Mary van der Linden has recently moved from London to Washington, D.C., with her two children and her loving, admired husband, Charlie, who is posted to the British Embassy. Nearly forty, Mary has spent a lifetime as a loyal daughter, wife and mother. But in this year of so much change, she feels compelled to break away from her familiar world and is drawn to the freedom of New York City, which is effervescent with parties, jazz, three- martini lunches, girls in their summer dresses and men in their Sinatra hats and big ties. Greenwich Village is still charmingly bohemian, and Miles Davis’s hit tune “On Green Dolphin Street” is playing everywhere. Mary finds a hotel room in New York and then finds a lover, while back in Washington her husband drinks to forget the demands of his job, the absence of his wife and the Cold War paranoia that has overtaken the capital.

Faulks breaks new ground with this novel: It is a love story, not a war story, and it is set in America rather than France. Yet readers of his two previous bestselling novels will recognize the close focus of the historical setting, the unforgettable characters and the gathering emotional power of the narrative. On Green Dolphin Street is a dramatic, tremendously moving novel that is certain to extend the American audience for this prodigiously talented author’s work.

About this title

From the Back Cover

“A romance full of luminous insights, brimming with feeling and paced to perfection. . . . No contemporary author writes with more power, more eloquent simplicity.” –San Francisco Chronicle

“Smart, well-wrought . . . a tenderly orchestrated love story. . . . everything an old-fashioned novel is supposed to do. . . . It will provoke and linger.” –Chicago Tribune

“Faulks is an exquisite observer. . . . The characters inhabit a setting so exotic and vivid, so correct in all its details, that it floods them with animating light.” –Newsday

“When passion erupts, Faulks is equal to the task. His prose gets it just right. . . . He has given us three very real, immensely appealing people.” –The Washington Post Book World

“[A] thoughtful love story [and] a melodic mood piece.” –The Oregonian

“Faulks has given us immensely appealing people, and only the hardhearted can fail to respond to their experiences with sympathy.” –New York Post

“[A] vivid novel of New York. . . . Seductive and radiant prose. . . . Faulks captures beautifully the cadence of the United States 40 years ago.” –Rocky Mountain News

“Exquisite. . . . Tragic. . . . [Faulks] displays to good advantage his considerable powers in describing the story’s various landscapes.” –The Seattle Times

“Faulks’ achievement is that he renders the period and places so convincingly that they become intimately familiar.” –Daily News (New York)

“Fans of Faulks . . . will find plenty of period atmosphere on which to hang their snap-brimmed fedoras.” –People

“This wonderful novel . . . makes being a grown-up seem enviable, stylish, seductive. . . . A joyous book with a glow of pleasure.” –Book

About the Author

Sebastian Faulks is best known for his trilogy of novels set in France: The Girl at the Lion d’Or, Birdsong and Charlotte Gray, the latter two of which were bestsellers in the United States. A film based on Charlotte Gray, directed by Gillian Armstrong and starring Cate Blanchett and Billy Crudup, is scheduled for release in early 2002. Faulks lives in London.

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0375502254
• ISBN 13: 9780375502255
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 368