Left Bank (Charnwood Large Print) [Import] [Hardcover]

Kate Muir (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Ulverscroft Large Print Books Ltd; Large Print Ed edition (September 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1846174260
• ISBN-13: 978-1846174261
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Surprising reversal of opinions, June 5, 2007

By 

Bookphile (USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Left Bank (Hardcover)

What I found most enjoyable about this book was the deft way in which the author manipulated my emotions. I was amazed how I could start with such a strongly negative reaction to one character and a positive one to another and then experience a total flip flop of my opinions. I really like it when an author can take a concept and turn it on its head and I think that's this novel's greatest success. Overall, though, it wasn't a hugely satisfying read but I think Muir has some serious potential.

11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Souffle, August 29, 2006

By 

John Joss (Los Altos, CA USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Left Bank (Hardcover)

Kate Muir's clever and well written book will in some ways reverse the distaste for bad books about Paris typified by the abominably written and researched Dan Brown 'Da Vinci' mess.
Where Brown mangled the geography and wrote with a baseball bat to the keys, Muir captures the essential terroir with tasteful and witty prose, while creating a marvelous bouillabaisse of characters--Olivier Malin, an uppity French intellectual, his transplanted Texan wife Madison, their 7-year-old daughter Sabine, the Brit-French nanny Anna, the Chechen cook Luiiza and her thuggy comperes, the concierge Madame Canovas . . . they are all well drawn and their interactions entertainingly appropriate, and the story credibly plotted.
Any reader who likes the real (as opposed to the tourist) Paris will find this book charmingly authentic, capturing not just the geography but the essence of the place, conveying Gallic sensibilities through the eyes of one who is obviously and unapologetically a British writer who likes and knows the place and the people (Muir has worked in Paris for the TIMES of London). Muir's satirical edge cuts where necessary, avoiding the easy cheap shots but revealing the curious and fascinating differences between cultures--for example, between the not-quite-French-enough Madison (seemingly modeled on the Connecticut-born actress known as 'Arielle Dombasle') and the all-too-self-consciously charming and preening Olivier (clearly a thin disguise for Dombasle's husband Bernard-Henri Levy or BHL, who is mentioned by the author as a 'fellow philosopher,' perhaps to avoid precisely this comparison).
For Muir, with Viking as her publisher, this is an excellent first novel that despite an uneven middle section sustain's the reader's interest to the end. Her next offering is awaited with interest. She has the chops.
PS Oui, d'accord, 'souffle' should have an 'egu' on the final letter but the resolutely American website doesn't care and won't offer proper accents--my apologies.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Enjoyable read, more unpredictable than I thought, November 3, 2006

By 

Marchissimo (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Left Bank (Hardcover)

I really liked this novel: good introspection of the characters moods and personalities. A bit repetitive and patronizing to the reader on the locale: why going on and on to make us understand it takes place in Paris? We know, we can taste it, we love Paris. Over all very visual: it would make a nice movie.