The Palace of Tears [Paperback]

Alev Lytle Croutier (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 2, 2002

It is 1868. On a balmy autumn afternoon in Paris, young winemaker Casimir de Châteauneuf wanders into a small shop filled with curiosities from the Orient. There he spies a cache of fine miniature portraits.

Above all others, an ivory-skinned beauty captivates him. Her eyes ... one blue, the other yellow. That night they pursue Casimir in his dreams, as one burning question consumes him: Who is she?

Thus begins Alev Croutier’s lush, stirring adventure of the heart — a mesmerizing tale of forbidden passion, true love, and destiny. For Casimir will forsake his family, his vocation, and his country to find the object of his obsession.

His journey will lead him across desert and sea, from the Royal Court in Paris to a sultan’s palace in Istanbul. And there he will find the woman of his reveries, the woman with one blue eye, the other yellow.

But in this city of passion, in a Palace of Tears, Casimir is about to discover what it will mean to make a dream real ... and what awaits him when his lover is set free.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A beautiful young woman with arresting eyes, held captive in a 19th-century harem; an insouciant French aristocrat, scion of the famous Ch teauneuf-du-Pape vineyards; the Suez Canal; Empress Eug nie; Louis Vuitton. What do they all have in common? Kismet. In author (Harem: The World Behind the Veil), filmmaker and former Mercury House editor-in-chief Croutier's first novel, lush, sensual writing is enhanced by touches of magical realism and cameo appearances by historical figures. Casimir de Ch teauneuf, 35, is bored with his wife, his children and the family vineyards. He seeks a dream. Stopping one day in a shop displaying bric-a-brac from the Orient, he spies a portrait, a miniature of a young woman in a flowing green caftan embroidered with gold tulips; one of her eyes is blue and the other, yellow. Bewitched by her face, he falls in love; the next day, he sets out to find her. Meanwhile, across the world in Istanbul, in the Palace of Tears (where no man is allowed), the harem slave known as La Poup e (the doll) is dreaming of Casimir. The two lovers are experiencing r ve deux, parallel dreams. Casimir suffers many physical hardships in his travels to find La Poup e, but eventually he returns to Paris, advised by an Antioch seer to "go back to where [he] started and stand still." Croutier's dreamy tale explores the issue of destiny and kicks the traditional romance novel up a notch with its smart epigraphs and clever (if ultimately intrusive) historical asides. Though the glossy surface of the narrative has the ability to deflect as well as to attract, readers of Laura Esquivel and Isabel Allende will likely find Croutier's novel a pleasant distraction. The book's small size and odalisque cover should prove a draw, as will blurbs from Allende, Katherine Neville and others. Agent, Bonnie Nadell. (Nov.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

Croutier's exotic modern fairy tale examines the Western fascination for all things Eastern during a period when Europe was renewing contact with the Muslim world. Casimir de Chateauneuf is a successful vintner amusing himself in Paris in 1868 when he discovers a tiny portrait of a beautiful woman, titled La Poupee (The Doll). Struck by the woman's unusual eyes--one is blue, the other is yellow--he becomes obsessed with finding her and leaves immediately for Egypt to track down the wandering artist who painted the portrait. When he does find this mysterious woman, he must endure great heartbreak, and eventually convert to Islam, in order to win La Poupee from an insane sultan. In addition to examining the cultural gap that separates Casimir and La Poupee, Croutier considers the social repercussions of the Suez Canal and the fragile relationships being cultivated by European monarchs and their Eastern counterparts. The historical threads are deftly interwoven with Casimir's love story, and Croutier's prose is poignantly cryptic. Bonnie Johnston
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Delta (January 2, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385334915
• ISBN-13: 978-0385334914
• Product Dimensions: 5 x 0.5 x 7.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,513,842 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Alev Lytle Croutier is the most widely published woman novelist of Turkish origin whose books have been translated into 23 languages.
Croutier was born in Izmir, Turkey, studied Literature at Robert College in Istanbul, Art History at Oberlin College,and film Studies at NYU. She has written and directed films in Japan, Turkey, Europe, and the US and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship (the first ever for a screenplay)for "Tell Me a Riddle," based on Tillie Olsen's acclaimed novel.
Croutier also founded Mercury House publishing company in San Francisco and served as the executive editor for almost a decade--editing numerous books, and actively supporting writers in diverse cultures, including Nobel recepients, in getting published.
Croutier has been in numerous radio shows and TV documentaries. She has also taught at Dartmouth, Goddard, and San Francisco State Universities and lectures frequently at academic institutions, museums, libraries, and conferences on Orientalism, Middle Eastern women, harems, and Turkish culture.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Palace of Tears, November 15, 2000

By 

Mandy Behbehani (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Palace of Tears (Hardcover)

In Palace of Tears, Alev Croutier wraps us up in her own magical reverie on a late 1800s-Frenchman who falls in love with a Turkish woman he sees in a miniature painting and sets out on a voyage to find her. Croutier's masterful handling of language and its layers only adds to the dreamy, ethereal nature of this novel which lulls you quite into another world, another age, making you believe you are drifting on a cloud above its protagonists. Taking her inspiration from Persian fairytales, Croutier leaves empty spaces for the reader to fill, ending up with a book that is interactive enough to fit in with our new high-tech age, while also harkening back to another, where poetry and love are always enough.

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Failed to engage, March 3, 2002

By 

Kelly (Fantasy Literature) (Columbia, MO United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Palace of Tears (Hardcover)

I give _The Palace of Tears_ three stars, because I can't think of anything I particularly liked _or_ disliked about it. It just kind of...was.

The novel seems to be based on a tale the author's grandmother told her long ago, and I can see that this could have been an enchanting story when told in that way. In fact, had Croutier written a short story with this material, pruning out the fluff, it probably would have been a very good love story. As it is, we have a slim story padded out into a short novel, stuffed with ruminations about the Suez Canal, and about the nature of love. We have characters that I just couldn't get into. They never really seemed real to me. The hero is callous in his treatment of everyone but the heroine, the heroine is too sweet and beautiful to be real, and they wander through the novel spewing forth theories on the nature of love and of fate. They talk like proverbs, not like real people.

Again, I would have liked it much better as a short story, with the forced philosophical musings left out.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A gorgeous little book, May 27, 2001

By 

JET (Parker, CO United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Palace of Tears (Hardcover)

This is a great little story of love, desire, loss, foreign places, and culture. Croutier paints beautiful pictures of every place the book takes the reader. The prose is vivid and alive, and the characters are vibrant and complex. Each chapter begins with a tiny black and white sketch that just adds to the mystery and eroticism of the book. This is a fairy tale for adults. You will want to live in the countries and time period that this book brings alive.