[a:Sylvia Townsend Warner|32349|Sylvia Townsend Warner|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/authors/1329513169p2/32349.jpg] has written a beautifully crafted tale of a 19th C wealthy, landed and slightly smug Englishwoman who spurns her adulterer husband, loses her children from smallpox and flees to France. There she finds herself stretching her feminist inklings to forge a new life with her husband's ex-mistress and embraces the revolution of 1848 happening around her. As Minna, her new companion, says "Though you may think you have chosen me..or chosen happiness,it is the revolution you have chosen." My commonplace book at the ready, there were abundant quotations to jot down, some outright humorous, but mainly the clear thinking and revolutionary story of a woman's transformation which propel the reader along. Townsend Warner was a contemporary of Woolf and Mansfield and equal to them in her writing. We read this book for a book club and the conversation flowed hither and yon. ( )

There was a lot to love in this story but it fell off the rails too often. The first part taking place in England is marvelous - one can feel the frustration and disappointment. It is when the action shifts to Paris that it all becomes too much. The unlikely passion is hard to believe in. The change in social and political outlook is very interesting but again, just a bit difficult to take seriously. I will look for other works by this author as I think she could be a wonderful story-teller. ( )

I love Warner, but boy, I struggled with this one. I liked the first part very much, where she does what she does best: explore the ambivalence of women trapped in their era's expectations and circumstances, how they cope (or don't), and how they struggle to break free. In the mid 1930s, it was probably fairly risky to write a story about a comfortable, handsome, intelligent woman - Sophia Willoughby - in 1848 who has separated herself from a selfish, feckless husband, and borne him two children - who then die horribly of smallpox. Sophia herself occasioned their exposure, by taking them to a lime-kiln to breathe the fumes to improve their health. Once they are dead, she finds she feels almost relieved. This is all more subtle and interesting than it sounds. Then she sets off to Paris, to come to an arrangement with her husband - and suddenly falls in love with his mistress.

It happens abruptly, and inexplicably. Minna Lemuel seems to have almost nothing to recommend her: she is frequently described as shabby, homely, amoral, shiftless, and exploitive, not to mention some uncomfortable Jewish stereotyping. I found it extremely difficult to understand what on earth attracted Sophia to Minna and Minna's talky, thinky, polemical friends. It devolves into far too much descriptive, perseverating, philosophical meandering. All necessary, to some extent, as Warner plonks this all down into the onset of the 1848 revolution in Paris. Now, if you are going to set yourself up to do a historical novel set there, you might do well to remember who and what you are up against: Victor Hugo's Les Miserables. Warner is good, but she isn't that good, and her politics and her art just sit uncomfortably, with various stock characters spouting tediously as Sophia transmutes into a happy, hungry street singer. The subplot involving Sophia's treatment of an illegitimate biracial half-cousin is ugly and comes to a horrific end - but somehow doesn't convince the reader that Warner is seriously bothered by it. The final setpiece on the barricades, Minna's death, and Sophia's plunge into violence is fairly rousing and dramatic, but... well, there's still Hugo looming forever bigger, warmer, better. Warner herself ended up a committed Communist, and the weird ending with Sophia suddenly absorbed by proto-Communist pamphlets is almost laughable.

Well-intentioned, still showing streaks of the insight and emotional sympathy that can engage, but... nope. I'd skip this one. ( )

It took me longer than I expected to finish this novel, although I liked it all the way through. In the first half, we see Sophia as a competent, energetic landowner, but the death of her frail children and final breach with her husband leaves her at a loss: what to do now. She sets out to Paris to meet her husband, but ends up drawn to and living with his former mistress, Minna, and witness the 1848 unrest first hand. ( )

proud woman loses children goes to Paris hoping estranged husband will impregnate her, falls in with his mistresses crowd and caught up in revolution 1848