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Category:
Literary Fiction
Type: Fiction
Pages: 193
Copyright: Feb 28 2018
ISBN-13: 9781370117703
Price: $3.99 (eBook)
Even before her pen-pal Albert arrived outside the gates of her school, Violet had decided they must fall in love, but how is she to she make Albert understand, and be sure her new friend has understood her?
A chance discovery in the back of a drawer sends Violet back on a Proustian journey through memories of a student exchange between 'The Abbess Etheldreda School for Girls', and 'Ecole Irene Nemirovsky'. Even before her pen-pal Albert arrives outside the school gates, Violet has decided to fall in love, but how can she make Albert understand, and be sure her new friend has understood her?
When Albert returns home, she is sure of their love, but she begins to have concerns over the doubt Albert reveals in the letters they exchange over months apart, so that by the time her class makes the journey to Paris, she is unsure of how she will be received.
Reluctantly, she tells the story of the revelation at Albert's home in Les Fontaines sur Seine that tests her love to breaking point.
Excerpt
“About this sunlight,” sighed Albert, “there is nothing to say.”
I nodded. The grass was intense dark green, matching Albert’s eyes, and each blade cast its own sharp shadow. The giant chestnuts down the slope were black pyramids with flaming peaks: in the chaos of Albert’s curls were kindled small fires. The mist in the shallow valley below us was a yellow sea that sent fingers curling around the hedgerows and up the driveway. Around my fingers curled Albert’s. To our right, the near edge of the wood was a giant’s fence, golden pales of beech separated by occasional exclamations of silver birch. Up the slope and to our left, across the driveway, a stand of trees cross-hatched the surface of the pond with shadow. Invisible to us, the pond stared up at the sky, with nothing in its eye except the sky itself; the sky stared down and saw only itself in the water, reflections of blue like stained glass, deepening to purple as the mask of day began to dissolve to reveal the universe beyond. The sun reluctantly let us go. Behind us, the upstairs windows of the house glowed orange then closed their lids, the shadows crept up onto the roof, the light retreated to the chimney pots. Yes, about this sunlight, there was nothing to say, and after my failure the previous evening to gather the words I needed, I was determined not to speak of the only thing on my mind. I would wait; Albert would speak.
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