Customer Reviews

The Pleasing Hour

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(19)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Lily King's, The Pleasing Hour, brings you into a world that is at once familiar and compelling. The novel's subject, a young woman's struggle with her ties to her only family member (her older sister) and her personal and instinctive needs, covers many issues: infertility, adoption, marital dynamics, what we leave behind during the transition to adulthood. Rosie, the protagonist, is a complex character who is painted so completely in the novel that you can easily feel yourself inside her head. Ms. King perfectly captures the angst of the late teenage years, compounded by Rosie's unique situation. All of the characters are robust and interesting. Their voices are all believable and equally fascinating. I would have loved to read the story over from any character's perspective. The novel is written in a tight, beautiful prose. The descriptions are ones you want to read again and again, and the story flows easily through many twists. There is an exotic feel to the novel, which is set in Europe and moves from modern day to earlier in the century. I have not been so moved and transported by a novel in a long time. Ms. King is a talented storyteller. She provides the perfect balance of intimate details with a believable and compelling storyline. Her descriptions and characters remain in my head, and I look forward to reading more of her work.

It is a rare and gratifying feeling to be as transported by a book as I was by The Pleasing Hour. How lovingly and accurately Ms. King renders Paris as well as her characters. It seems hard to imagine that any demanding reader would not admire the poetic, honest language, the seductive and sad and ultimately liberating atmosphere of the story, the wonderful tale itself. This is a book to savor and reread.

Lily King's first novel opens up like a flower might in the southern town of Plaire where her first chapter is set. The rearrangements of time and place that King juggles allow for constantly changing points of view, until at the end of the short novel the reader sees below the surface of things. The prose is remarkable for its clarity and freshness. I look forward to reading it a second time and to introducing it to others.

The Pleasing Hour is a magical mystery ride into the every-day dynamics of a French family's life on a house boat in Paris. The protagonist is attempting to escape from an inescapable experience after high school graduation in the United States. We see the beauty and etheral nature of Paris through her artist's eyes. We learn to live and love through her. I define a tour-de-force as a book that grabs hold of you with its language, its characters, its depiction of environment as an extention of the characters and plot. It describes a reader's ultimate joy: picking up a book and being totally transported into another, more powerful and meaningful reality. If Lily King never writes another book, it doesn't matter. This is a classic. It is a self-contained work of art/pleasure. Bravo.

I have to admit that for the second time, I wish Amazon had half point star (like 3.5 stars) rating, because in all reality this book is really a 3.5 on the ratings. I gave it a 4 because it is a quick and good read ~~ and the writing is superb. But I keep finding myself asking what the point of the novel was. Rosie moves to Paris to live with a family on a boat, after she gives birth to a baby to give to her sister and husband ~~ who cannot have children. She didn't just move, she escaped from the pain of knowing that she wanted her baby more than anything and knowing that she can't have her baby. While in Paris, she becomes involved with her "family" ~~ and their lives. And falls in love with Nicole's husband, Marc. To escape from that love, she flees to a southern town in France ~~ where Nicole grew up in. The story begins with fleeing from her past and ends with acceptance ~~ Rosie finally finds a place where she feels she belongs. And finally finds acceptance with Nicole, the one woman who Rosie didn't care for. The two women were a lot more alike than Rosie realized ~~ and the story revolves around those two characters. It is a pleasant read ~~ and King takes you on a descriptive tour of France and Spain ~~ I almost see where Rosie was going. If you have the wanderlust in you, this book will be a great tease to your senses ~~ and while it won't satisfy your longings, it will calm it for a short while. If you like reading about other cultures, this book is a short introduction to the French culture. This is not my favorite read of the year, but it will do sufficently for a short period of time when all I want to do is read and escape from the reality pressing in. It does carry you away into a different world and, isn't it always more fun to read about someone else's problems? This book did the trick for me!

Lily King's writing style is excellent! This is a story of a young woman who gets pregnant while finishing high school, so that she can give the baby to her sister and her husband who are unable to have children. Once she gives birth, the reality of what she has done becomes too much for her and she leaves for France without telling anyone where she is going.

The novel focuses on Rosie and her interactions with the people around her - the family that she lives with as the nanny and others she meets through that experience. Rosie'c character develops throughout the novel. Rosie leaves Paris and heads to the south of France. It is here that it appears as if Rosie will be able to come to terms with her past.

The novel is well written and it is a quick read! Well worth your time. I will definitely read another novel by Lily King!

I very much enjoyed reading The Pleasing Hour -- I'm actually quite surprised that Oprah hasn't chosen it for her book club. It's very much her type of book -- summer reading with a kick. The novel centers around a young American girl who literally runs away to Paris and becomes an au pair for a rather interesting family there. The Pleasing Hour deals not only with Rosie, the au pair, but delves into the characters of the entire Tivot family -- the distant and cold mother, the scattered father who longs for human affection, the confused older sister, the brassy younger sister, and the brother, coddled by his mother and longing to become a priest. The book is somewhat of an insight into French culture, but Lily King is no Peter Mayle. It's the characters and the relationships among them that make The Pleasing Hour shine. The reader learns the cause of Rosie's pain quite early on in the book, and in a way, she's merely a window through which the reader is able to get a glimpse of the Tivot family. An intriguing and well-written debut novel -- I look forward to reading more by Ms. King.

Lily King's "The Pleasing Hour" is an amazing book. The sensitively drawn portraits of the protagonist and all the characters--including the children--cast light on individual and cultural difference, and on how one young American's ideas of identity and self-discovery contrast with the French family and environment in which she makes her new home. King captures these subtle differences in language, thought, and self-conception while telling an engaging, and at times harrowing, family story. There is a dash of humor, too, and just plain good writing. It's a fabulous read.

While this book had some rather interesting moments and scenes, I felt that overall the themes of the book weren't fully developed. Perhaps too much ground was covered. And as I read through the first 200 pages of the book, I was hoping that by the end, some questions would be answered, but instead I found the last few pages even more confusing.

I am aware that this book recently won the Discovery Award from Barnes & Noble for a first time author and I wondered why. Perhaps I need to read this book again to confirm my primary opinion.

This novel, by a graduate of the MFA program at Syracuse University, is an astounding first novel. I have to agree with what someone said in an earlier review, that the main narrative of this novel is perhaps a story that overshadowed another story lying within. The au pair is running from her past, in a significant way, yet there is never any sense of resolution, never any sense of completion, never any sense of exactly what drives her to do what she does. The cross-cutting narrative dealing with the pasts of the French characters was a little meandering, and a little unconvincing. But the main conflicts of the novel, the relationships among the characters, and most of all the emotions of the characters as they got to know each other more deeply, were beautifully and lyrically conveyed. The writing King does to describe the evanescence of emotion is among the best I have read in a long time. There is a wistfulness and ache to her prose that is a perfect fit with the situations she describes, and although the novel suffers a bit from a lack of focus and resolution, and it loses itself a little too frequently in side-narratives that do not move the main plot along well, these are minor complaints about what was a terrific book to read.