Customer Reviews

The Little Balloonist

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a wonderful story about gifted, brave, and selfless characters juxtaposed with those who struggle with fear, vanity, and self absorption (including Napoleon himself). The reader is given rich historical details of life in Napoleon's France in a writing style that effortlessly combines pictorial vividness and psychological insight. Mrs. Donn is careful to bring forth her characters in all of their complexity while leaving just enough to the reader's imagination. Her loving care of them is remarkable, as are their stories.

Ms. Donn has given us a great gift, in this her first novel. It is a work that so perfectly captures the fascinating period of Napoleanic France, that one marvels at the detail and the scope of her writing. I will never forget the image Ms. Donn gives us of Napolean riding into battle, tearing out pages of the book he is reading as he proceeds with his army picking up stray pages as they blow past them. Luckily we are on much firmer ground as this novel rises with the beautiful prose of the author, and our imaginations are held by the characters and settings. The coast of Northern France is especially compelling, with the white stretches of salt, underscoring the depth of the longing of the characters for the a life of color and love. I was also intrigued by Ms. Donn's skillful musing on the nature of time, reminding us that our past can never be fully overcome, as it becomes our present. In many ways this novel very much resembles its main character. She is a woman of great beauty and power, but as ephemeral as a novel is long. I loved reading each word of this remarkable book, and eagerly await Ms. Donn's next gift to us all.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading every word of this delightful novel, The Little Balloonist, by Linda Donn. It is a lyrical and touching story of love and loss, war and adventure, invention and history in all the right doses of each. I felt every nuance; I could smell the salt air, feel the ephemeral silk between my fingers, shiver in the dampness of St. Helena all the while sensing the human drama that surrounded the lives of these Frenchmen at the dawn of their new country.
Ms. Donn brings revolutionary France alive and expertly draws the reader into the psyche of one of the world's most famous emperors, all done as a backdrop for the story she weaves of a little known French adventuress. Her use of prose is artistic while the tale is captivating. I was sorry when it ended and look forward to Ms. Donn's next book.

Cleverly weaving fact with fiction, author Linda Donn sets her story at the turn of the 18th century, telling the real life exotic story of French balloonist Sophie Blanchard. We first meet Sophie Armant when she is young girl living a quiet life in a provincial French town of La Saliere. She spends he days wondering the windswept beach, seeking inspiration on her future and playing a wishing game by looking into the faces of seashells.

In love with her poor but loyal friend Andre Giroux, Sophie hopes that Andre will someday marry her, so she is shattered when renowned entrepreneur and adventurer, and the far wealthier Jean-Pierre Blanchard suddenly turns up with a promise for betrothal. An old family friend, Jean-Pierre once pledged a romantic gesture to lift her family out of poverty, but Sophie's mother Isabel, aware that her daughter's heart is vowed to another, is determined to stop the wedding.

But it's all too little too late, as Georges, dictatorial father has spoken. This was not a time when girls chose their husbands, and in La Saliere no one was as rich as her suitor Jean-Pierre Blanchard. Although Jean-Pierre complains of her thinness and her vivid face, the young innocent is packed off to Jean's home Les Petits-Andelys, and then later to Paris.

All Sophie knows of her husband is that he is famous and that he flies through the air in a basket. A renowned aeronaut, Jean-Pierre was the first to drop animals in parachutes, the first to try to control his flights with sails and rudders, the first to cross the English Channel, and also the first to fly in America. However, he's never really felt comfortable ballooning, and plagued by an irrational fear of falling he confesses to Sophie that he is happier just to just look up at the sky.

Soon enough, Sophie is taking over the business and is on her way to her first balloon ascension. She takes to the sky like a bird, for when the ground falls away she feels "light, as if she had left her body on the earth," looking for a storm to push her through the "fissure of heavens." Whilst in Jean-Pierre she has found the freedom of flight, she still pines for her true love, the same strange of memories uniting them, and binding them, and she "wonders if like a doubled thread it might have made their love stronger."

Donn writes expertly of time and place, the details of the period meticulously researched. She also suggests that there were parallels between Sophie's ascent into the heavens and the ascent to power of Napoleon Bonaparte, a character who the author miraculously brings to life with all his blustery foibles. Whilst Sophie pines for her one true love, soon becoming a symbol for the people of France, Napoleon steadily becomes more besotted with the young woman, even inviting the heroine to become his ''official aeronaute."

The author has done a good job of merging the threads of Sophie's life into the wider canvas of French political, cultural, and social life, setting her story against a background of a nation reeling from hunger and death. Napoleon is rampaging across Europe, the new republic declaring with on Austria, republicans against royalists, republicans against republicans, everybody intent on trying to overthrow their rulers.

However, I just wish that Donn had fleshed out her story more, her style is at times a little too prosaic, with too little character development, and scenes that just feel too rushed; it's as though Donn in an effort to get her story down on the page, has left her ability to create solid narrative behind; at times the novel barely holds together.

Still, The Little Balloonist does show a France - and to a lesser extent Europe - that is on the cusp of grand scientific and aeronautical achievements with ballooning emblematic if the democratic spirit aboard. Watching Sophie soar above the French populace, through limitless skies is indeed thrilling, perhaps even reminding the French of the freedoms that they have been fighting so hard for. Mike Leonard January 06.

Wealthy inventor and dare devil Jean-Pierre Blanchard marries the much younger country bumpkin because he owes her family for saving his life when his latest contraption failed. Jean-Pierre especially enjoys soaring over the city in hot air balloons. To his shock clumsy Sophie takes to the air like a bird and is soon flying solo.

After she becomes a widow, France recognizes that a female aviator is flying. Word quickly reaches Emperor Napoleon who is sick of his wife Josephine's extramarital affairs and her waste on expensive clothing that make her look like a peacock. Instead he years for Sophie and begin s courting her at the same time her childhood friend Andre Giroux the psychic healer comes wooing her too.

THE LITTLE BALLOONIST is a terrific biographical fiction tale starring a highly admired female balloonist who could count Napoleon as one of her fans. The story line provides a deep look at the pioneer balloonists who bravely flew in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries; Jean Pierre and Sophie were real celebrities soaring above the masses. Readers will enjoy this delightful historical that uses a fascinating romantic triangle starring the emperor, the psychic and the balloonist to bring a lesser known part of Napoleonic France vividly soaring to readers.

Harriet Klausner

The Little Balloonist by Linda Donn is a wonderful story of love, loss and redemption told through the life of Sophie Blanchard, one of the first women balloonists.Sophie is a determined young woman who makes the most of adversity and forges for herself a remarkable life. Ms. Donn is a deft and poetic writer who weaves her tale with great dexterity.

This is a really slow moving novel which covers the life of one woman from age 16 to death. It's told in third-person omniscient and sometimes interrupts the narrative to tell the reader what will happen in the future. The narrator is detached from the story and never engaged me as a reader. The plot skips around from character to character and there are far too many to keep track of. Sophie's life is summarized rather than fully shown. The epilogue does not match the prologue or even the rest of the novel. I found this book really slow and uninteresting. I wanted to like it but I just couldn't get into it. The story of Sophie's childhood would make a great young adult novel.

Rarely does one come across such a satisfying read: a lovely story, compelling characters, and a fascinating historical background. Equal parts drama and contemplation, the pace of the book, as well as its content, makes it totally engrossing. The tale moves seamlessly from Sophie Armant's impoverished beginnings on the coast of France to her career as the first internationally famous female balloonist, in a world peopled by such notable characters as Napoleon, Goethe and Daguerre. Throughout, however, Sophie's tale is prmarily a very private, deeply moving love story. The kind of "find" that you can recommend to your friends!

The author's writing style and character development make this book a delightful way to spend a winter's evening. Sophie is someone I would have wanted to know. The historical setting, Napoleanic France, lends added intrigue and interest. I'm recommending this jewel of a story to all my friends.

What a love story! A perfect present for Valentine's Day if you're still looking for any last minute gifts. I bought this book on a friend's recommendation and read it from start to finish in one evening. A lost love? A rekindled romance? All definitely keep the pages turning. And Donn's vivid descriptions of Napoleonic France all come alive. I highly recommend.