On Green Dolphin Street [Import] [Paperback]

Sebastian Faulks (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Vintage / Random House; Later Printing edition (2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 009927583X
• ISBN-13: 978-0099275831
• Product Dimensions: 5 x 0.8 x 7.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,088,409 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Evocative of a place and time, January 29, 2002

By 

J. F Malysiak "macafferty" (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: On Green Dolphin Street: A Novel (Hardcover)

A not entirely successful new novel by the bestselling author of such highly respected works as Birdsong and Charlotte Grey. While Faulks's attention to period detail is, as ever, right on the money - New York's Greenwich Village during the Beat era is evocatively rendered - and his writing at times utterly gorgeous, the story, about a British diplomat's wife and her affair with a New York newspaper journalist, only takes off in sporadic bursts. The character of Mary is sympathetic, but the reader feels more an observer of the events unfolding than an actual participant in them, despite heavy use of interior monologue and flashback. Her husband Charles,again, is sympathetic but not particularly developed. Faulks's most successful character here is Frank, the American journalist with whom Mary falls in love. He just feels right, completely representative of New York City in that place and time.

With all that said, however, I did find the final third of the novel quite moving when Mary must make the inevitable choice between her husband and her lover.

Recommended reading ... just with some reservations.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Don't believe the critics, February 2, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: On Green Dolphin Street: A Novel (Hardcover)

Even though I've read and enjoyed all of Faulk's other books I took a pass on "On Green Dolphin Street" when it first came out because of the mediocre reviews. Fortunately I happened to pick it up in the library and was so enchanted by the first two pages that I dropped everything else I was reading to finish it. Of all Faulks books I think it is best, if only for the fact it doesn't have all those distracting sub-plots like the grand-daughter in Birdsong and Charlotte's relationship with her father in Charlotte Gray. Mary van der Linden finds herself at age 40 with an alcoholic husband, two children who must be packed off to boarding school, a terminally ill mother and the attentions of an interesting newspaper reporter. How does she take care of everyone else and still be able to save herself? Faulk's writing is beautiful picking out wonderful details of life in the balance between the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations. Frank and Mary make love with their words as much with their bodies. The scenes in which Mary and Frank try to keep their hands off one another are so filled with sexual tension you don't know whether to laugh or cry for them. Other scenes throughout the book are brilliant facets of a perfect gem. To be sure Faulks hasn't let go completely of his war stories. Both Frank and Mary's husband Charlie are scarred by their wartime experiences and still find themselves to soldiers of a sort in the Cold War. But it's Mary's battle to decide between the two men she loves that kept me turning the pages right up until the end.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Rich premise, overwritten, failed conclusion, June 5, 2002

By 

Peter Lorenzi (Maryland, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: On Green Dolphin Street: A Novel (Hardcover)

Mary and Charlie, the British diplomatic couple with the Dutch surname, are an unlikely pair. Charlie's slide into alcoholic oblivion does not receive much explanation other then war trauma when Frank, Mary's lover, seems to have shared many of the same war experiences as Charlie and is none the worse for wear.

This book is more literate than passionate. Faulks engages in poetic descriptions of feelings, cities, and settings, but leaves the reader without a good reason to like any of the three protagonists. Faulks also tempts the reader with a promising story line involving the Kennedy-Nixon campaign and Cold War tensions, but he leaves it all in the background. History is wasted. There is even a curious chronological slight, as Faulks places Frank fighting in Guadacanal in 1942 and then being shipped to France in 1945.

The ending is excessively melodramatic and any well-traveled news reporter would have allowed for a possible delay in an overseas flight, instead of giving up so easily and taking it out on the roof of a taxi. If a taxi roof had been nearby when I finished reading, I think I'd have taken out a few frustrations myself. Faulks offered enough to keep me rading but not enough to satisfy me in the end, to recommend this to another reader, or to pick up another of his books.