In her preface to this reprint of her first novel, which was originally published in 1930, Kay Boyle writes that “the meaning of the book may perhaps be that there is always in life the necessity to choose,” which isn’t my favorite moral: I mean, yes, but sometimes the choice you get to make is to have both\/and, rather than either\/or, but many stories about choices only look at the either\/or kind. So I started this book a little bit ready to dislike it, but ended up pretty pleased. Boyle’s prose feels very considered, poised: involved descriptions of the coastal landscape of Brittany (a river that meets the sea, the inrushing tide, gulls on the wing) serve as metaphor for the protagonist’s situation: the broad possibility of the ocean, the comparative narrowness of the river, the sense of freedom in the wind and waves, but the sameness of them, too. <\/p>\n
Boyle’s heroine, Bridget, is an American in her early twenties who is married to Nicolas, who’s French. When the book opens, Bridget and Nicolas are resting after having just arrived at his parents’ house: the book starts thus: “She came gradually to be awake, lying soft and rested in the plumed bed, deep in the protective palm of his family” (7). But a protective palm can close into a fist, preventing escape, and escape ends up being a major theme and concern. Bridget and Nicolas don’t have money; his parents do; his father says he’ll give them fifty thousand francs if they have a child. But Nicolas has a bone disease that’s clearly genetic, and doesn’t want to pass it on to a son he might have. Meanwhile, Nicolas’s father is full of judgment: he judges what Bridget wears to swim, scolds her when she lies in the grass, polices what his 32-year-old daughter reads, withdraws his permission for another daughter to go on a church trip. Other family members dream of their own escapes: one of Nicolas’s sisters wants to go into a convent, another wants desperately to marry a friend of the family, Luc. But Luc’s intentions and affections are unclear, until they’re clarified by Bridget’s presence: he wants her. <\/p>\n
And so, Bridget finds herself with a choice between two men, except not exactly: her choice is between the stasis of life with Nicolas’s family and the cost of escape, the cost of change. (In the preface, Boyle notes that the novel is largely autobiographical, except that there was no Luc figure in reality: he was added at the advice of a publisher who wanted a romantic subplot. And he’s a bit too much a figure of romance, too gallant and dashing and also inscrutable. I would perhaps have liked to read the version of this book without him.) <\/p>\n
What I liked best in this book was the language, the pacing and tone, and description. There are some excellent set pieces: a fire in town, with Bridget and one of Nicolas’s sisters joining the bucket brigade; a summer afternoon that was meant to be a peaceful family picnic but is encroached upon by a group of English tourists; a visit from a fastidious uncle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In her preface to this reprint of her first novel, which was originally published in 1930, Kay Boyle writes that “the meaning of the book may perhaps be that there is always in life the necessity to choose,” which isn’t my favorite moral: I mean, yes, but sometimes the choice you get to make is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6233\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}