Synopsis
Tells the story of a German woman married to a flautist who begins a passionate affair with a Jewish instrument maker after her child is born that lasts two decades and spans the most troubling years of the Cold War in Europe
Reviews
Acclaimed Canadian-born Huston, a longtime resident of France (where this novel, her seventh, was originally published), debuts here with a melancholy tale of a proud French flutist and a Marxist Hungarian Jew who, in the late 50s, share a secretive German woman. As France's brutal war against its former colony Algeria erupts, the silent Saffie appears at Raphael's door in Paris in response to an ad for a maid; without saying much, she soon has the job. In fact, her diffidence so excites the passions of her young employer that he seduces her, then asks her to marry hima change of status she agrees to. What doesnt change, even after their son is born, is Saffies attitude: she still feels indifferent about Raphael, though she cares for him in the same obsessive way she keeps house, while Raphael takes inspiration from his little family on his way to becoming the most acclaimed flutist of his generation. Little does he suspect that an errand run by Saffie to the shop of his instrument repairman has resulted in her giving herselfbody and soulto the man there. She lives for the next tryst with her lover, Andr s, and Raphael unwittingly obliges the couple with his frequent tours and lengthy practice sessions. Only to Andr s can Saffie, the child of a Nazi veterinarian, talk about her wartime past: living near Berlin, bombs killing her best friend, she and her mother being raped by Russian troops, her mother committing suicide. But to Andr s, as a Jew in Budapest during the war, such horrors pale next to his own family's suffering. What's more, as a dedicated Marxist in Paris, he moves in dangerous circles, helping the Algerians to bring the savagery at home back to France. Despite their differences, however, the affair prospersuntil Raphael finally discovers what's going on and intervenes, with tragic results. A stylish, sophisticated story, complete with archly ironic narration, marred only slightly by an overly melodramatic end. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Drenched in irony, and very French in sensibility, Huston's U.S. debut must overcome an unfortunate beginning before it gallops away with the reader's mesmerized attentionAbut once underway, it fascinates with its blend of cynicism and romance, and its dramatization of the roles of accident and fate, and of evil and injustice, in human history. Initially, one must accept a far-fetched plot: that when world-famous flutist Raphael Lepage sees Saffie, the young German woman who answers an ad for a maid to clean his luxurious Paris apartment, he immediately succumbs to overwhelming love and soon afterward marries herAdespite the fact that she is as emotionless as a zombie, does not even remotely return his affections and is anathema to his beloved mother, who has never forgiven the Nazi occupation 20 years before. Even the birth of a son does not thaw Saffie's cold indifference, which persists until she meets Andr s, a Hungarian-Jewish refugee who repairs musical instruments; the mutual recognition of irresistible passion releases all her emotions. During their liaisons in his little shop in the Marais, Andr s tells Saffie about the destruction of his family in Budapest, and she reveals her own traumatic memories of WWIIAthe Allied bombings, her father's complicity with the campaign of annihilation, her mother's brutal rape by conquering Russian soldiers. Even as their affair unfolds, however, the horrifying events of the 1940s are being repeated in Algeria and France, as FLN terrorists strike back at French atrocities. In the end, innocence must die, as, Huston reminds us, it always has and always will. While Huston often overwrites and sometimes indulges in arch asides, once she establishes her story's central ironies, the narrative achieves a relentless velocity. A scene in which both Saffie and Andr s recall separate incidents in which poorly buried bodies erupt through the earth, drenching the soil with blood, is a shattering reminder of the endless cycle of human violence. Canadian-born Huston has lived in France for more than three decades, where her books (seven novels plus nonfiction works) are bestsellers. BOMC and QPB selections; paperback rights to Vintage. (Oct.) FYI: The Mark of an Angel won the French Prix des Lectrices d'ELLE and the Prix des Librairies in Canada, and is shortlisted for the Prix Goncourt in France. Huston's other awards include the Prix Contrepoint, the Prix Goncourt Lyceen and the Canadian Governor General's Award in French.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Saffie doesn't seem like an angel when she emerges from the train station in Paris in 1957 but so profoundly impassive as to be almost unreal. She takes up duties as a maid to talented flautist Raphael, who promptly falls in love with her and, in a passage that seems even more unreal than Saffie herself, quickly manages to bed, marry, and impregnate her. Not even little Emil can rouse Saffie from her sublime listlessness. Then, when she takes her husband's flute for repair, she encounters Andr s and instantly comes alive. It's clear from the start that Saffie is running from a terrible secret dating to World War II, and Andr s, a Hungarian Jew, has past sorrows of his own. Their passionate affair serves not to heal them but as further escape, and it has gruesome consequences. Perhaps the ending is not quite convincingAtoo abrupt and not sufficiently rooted in what precedesAbut Huston's prose is strong, ironic, and refreshingly original; she effectively revisits events of this century so much discussed that, tragically, we can go as numb as Saffie. This book was both an award winner and a best seller in France, where Canadian Huston has lived for years. A priority purchase for most libraries.ABarbara Hoffert, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Paris has always been the city for doomed love affairs, from the Hunchback of Notre Dame to Bogey and Ingrid Bergman. Huston, a Canadian writer who lives in Paris, adds another to the list with this poignant story of two shell-shocked World War II survivors coming together in Paris in the late 1950s. Saffie is an oddly passive German woman who wanders into Paris and into the life of Raphael, a classical musician beginning a triumphant career. Saffie cleans Raphael's house, marries him, has his child, but remains somehow untouchable. The thin veil shielding her from the pain of life is only removed when she meets Andras, an musical instrument maker who lives in the Marais district. In the arms of Andras, a Hungarian Jew and radical activist, Saffie experiences a life-affirming passion that Huston contrasts with the atrocities committed by the French in the Algerian revolution. This attempt to link the personal and political never quite works--authorial intrusions prove more jarring than enlightening--but the story of Saffie and Andras hits a perfect melancholy note and sustains it superbly. Bill Ott
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