I was completely enchanted by this Rose Tremain novel. The narrator, Lewis, is not quite 14-years old and this is a sort of coming of age drama that has plenty of drama, misunderstandings and passion. Lewis and his mother Alice go and stay with Valentina in Paris while Alice translates Valentina's latest novel in to English. Lewis' dad Hugh stays at home and builds a garden house for Alice that Lewis knows his mother will never use. Lewis is interested in the world and observant and Rose Tremain shows how as a young teenager he can yo-yo between being a child and an adult. The novel is part coming of age story and part mystery when Valentina goes missing and this story ensures the novel has a good pace. Go with the story and you will find a great read that I can't recommend highly enough. ( )

Thirteen-year-old Lewis travels to Paris for the summer, accompanying his mother who will be translating the latest Medieval Romance novel by the alluring Russian author, Valentina. Lewis falls in love with the 40-year-old author as well as with the city of Paris. When Valentina goes missing, the infatuated Lewis becomes obsessed with finding her; he leaves nothing to the police but initiates his own search for the missing author. In the backdrop, his geographically distant father and emotionally distant mother have their own drama unfolding, although this always stays in the background and serves as fuel for Lewis' adolescent determination toward independence. He follows the clues until he does, indeed, discover what happened to Valentina; then he becomes determined to rescue her.

My reactions to this novel are mixed. It never quite rang true for me but I suspect I will remember it for a while. Lewis is an appealing narrator and protagonist: he's smart, moody, and believably adolescent. His adventure is less convincing. Part of my ambivalence is that 13-year-old male sexuality is of absolutely no interest to me, but it clearly fascinates Tremain as she explores Lewis' passion for Valentina, a passion both sexual and childish (as in: maternal attachment). Given that I was bored for a notable part of the reading experience, I was surprised that, as the story came to its climax and resolution, I cared what was going to happen. The ending was more satisfying than the process of getting there.

Tremain's descriptions of Paris are themselves alluring and Valentina's dog, Sergei, is enough to make me go in search of a new canine family member. I'll continue to read Rose Tremain's works but I do hope for better next time. ( )

This was my train read over the weekend and for the most part, it worked well. Lewis's summer adventures in Paris while his mother translates the alluring Valentina's latest medieval romance novel made for an entertaining read. It was only in the last third where I started struggling with suspension of disbelief with Valentina's disappearance and Lewis's conviction that he was the only on the right track of solving it. ( )

“Life is not a dress rehearsal.”

Having very recently read and been impressed with Tremain's "The Road Home" I decided to tackle another of her novels. However, for me this one is far less successful.

This book centres around a 13-year-old English boy, Lewis Little, who along with his mother Alice, a translator, is invited to spend the summer holidays in Paris with popular medieval novelist Valentina Gavrilovich, whilst his father stays in England. Alice is there to work on Valentina's latest novel but Lewis is there purely to improve his French language skills.

Alice's work leaves Lewis with a lot of free time on his hands but no real friends to spend it with and he soon becomes captivated by his much older, voluptuous hostess. When Alice appears to start an affair (it is never proven conclusively) Lewis begins to focus all his attention on to Valentina lusting after her imagining them as lovers.

One day Valentina suddenly disappears and Lewis is convinced that she has been kidnapped. Turning super-sleuth Lewis attempts to rescue his first love rather than leaving it in the hands of the authorities which is what his mother prefers. The police initially believe that Valentina has been coerced into returning to her homeland of Russia by an old boyfriend who had recently been in the city. Lewis however, does no believe this theory and aided by Valentina's next door neighbour, Moinel, follows a different tack. When Lewis apparently gets too close to the truth he too is kidnapped and shares captivity with Valentina in an adjoining room all the time becoming ever attached to her as he tries to devise an escape talking non-stop with her through a hole in the wall until it all reaches a fateful climax.

Therefore this novel is part mystery, part romance and part adolescent fantasy. Now whilst on the whole I enjoyed the author's writing style and admitting that it had some amusing and touching moments for me overall it did not really gel. Without wanting to appear overly sexist I feel that this book would have been better if it had been written by a man who had actually lived through and had some of these teenage male fantasies because somehow I just did not feel that Tremain quite got Lewis's character quite right. In contrast I quite enjoyed her portrayal of Valentina and the frosty Alice. Overall an OK read but missed the target IMHO. ( )

This is one of my all time favourite reads. I was completely captivated by the narrator, Lewis, and his coming of age drama. I don't want to say too much more because I don't want to spoil anything, but having just felt quite disappointed with The Road Home because it seemed to me the characters were too cosseted, and that Tremain was running ahead and smoothing their way the whole time, I'd have to say that The Way I Found Her was a much, much braver book.

I finished reading it at five in the morning and was so utterly bereft by the ending that I had to go wake my husband up to tell him about it. (Luckily, he's a good sport...) ( )