Song for Eloise [Hardcover]

Leigh Sauerwein (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2004

This colorful tale of love and loss is set in France at the end of the 12th century. It is the time of the troubadours and of the Sixth Crusade. Young Eloise is given in marriage to a loyal vassal and has gone to live in his castle. Her uncle, John, just back from the fifth crusade, seeks penance in an abbey where he illuminates manuscripts and longs to fresco the altars. Thomas, the troubadour, and his companion, Babel, the juggler, make their way from village to village, from tavern to castle, singing and entertaining. While peasants work the fields, knights hunt and fight and joust, monks pray the hours of the day, and the seasons turn, Lady Eloise and Thomas, devoted friends separated as children, reunite across an inseparable divide. Song for Eloise conveys all the pageantry of medieval life, evoking the mystery and wonder of that long ago time, imbuing it with the passion of timeless romance.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 8 Up-At 15, Eloise, the daughter of a powerful lord, is devastated when she is promised to Robert, a man twice her age, who once saved her father's life. The plight of women in 12th-century France underscores this tale of unattainable true love. The richly told story goes back and forth in time giving depth and understanding to the characters and their motivations. Eloise is her father's favorite child, yet he adheres to the custom and belief that he has the right and obligation to choose her life's mate. Eloise and Robert marry, but the young woman remains unhappy and longs for her childhood home. Robert is not characterized as a villain; he truly loves Eloise and is thrilled by the birth of their child. He hires a troubadour to cheer her and the young man turns out to be an old childhood friend with whom she falls in love. Robert's blind mother, Lady Merle, at first frightens Eloise, but does show compassion and understanding for her situation. However, her first loyalty is to her son. Through clear, descriptive prose, Sauerwein beautifully interweaves the history of the time into her spare tale of love and loss. Despite its brevity, the number of characters and perspectives make this a challenging read. This absorbing story is a fine choice for an interdisciplinary study of the time.
Renee Steinberg, formerly at Fieldstone Middle School, Montvale, NJ
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Gr. 8-10. "Fifteen summers she, and thirty winters he / Once her beauty he has seen, she will make his winter green." Perhaps these humorous verses, sung by castle folk to celebrate Eloise's marriage to the gruff Robert of Rochefort, give this novel its title. One suspects, however, that the true "Song for Eloise" lies in the multiple voices that rise and fall like those in a Gregorian chant, telling of the unhappy union between Eloise and Robert (she associates sex with a jousting match) and the resulting turmoil when a visiting troubadour ignites her passion. The smattering of liturgical Latin and poetic, Book of Days-inspired interludes may be disorienting to Sauerwein's audience, and the amount of time spent with subsidiary characters may frustrate YA readers, whose sympathies will lie firmly with Eloise. Even so, those willing to let the gorgeous, densely atmospheric prose wash over them and able to take the bluntly realistic conclusion in stride will come away with a sense of having been steeped in another time. Jennifer Mattson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 14 and up
  
• Hardcover: 133 pages
• Publisher: Front Street; First Edition edition (May 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1886910901
• ISBN-13: 978-1886910904
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.1 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,832,306 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Beautiful But Sad Story, April 27, 2005

By 

Meredith Noire "Writer and Reader" (The Banks of the Wabash Far Away) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Song for Eloise (Hardcover)

SONG FOR ELOISE is written in a lightly flowing narrative delicate as a spider web. The point of view shifts between several voices, drifting from Eloise to the characters of her husband Sir Robert, Robert's mother Merle, Eloise's Uncle John, Thomas the fisherman's son turned troubadour, the juggler Babel, the hermit William, and the peasant families living near Robert's fortress as well as softly touching upon a few more. Together their individual tales interweave to create a single story.

Having been married off to her father's favorite knight, a man twice her age, Eloise is overcome by melancholy. She pines away for her old life at her parents' castle and refuses to find any happiness in her new life at Baron Robert's remote fortress. Robert is well versed in the arts of war, but he is a failure when it comes to expressing his love for his young wife who thinks he is nothing but a dumb brute and cannot look past her own grief to see his "good heart." After the birth of their son, Robert tries to bring back the light he so adored into his wife's eyes by inviting a singer to the fortress. When Thomas the troubadour arrives, Eloise's inner spirit is reawakened; however, it is in a way tragic for all involved. The happiness she does at last find has the potential to destroy the lives of her lover, her husband, and herself.

Although the story is named for Eloise, Robert is undoubtedly the hero of it. He is the most sympathetic of all the main characters. It is he who acts unselfishly and suffers silently. Robert raised himself up from being the illegitimate son of a baron tossed out to live unwanted among the peasants to becoming first a stable boy, then a knight, and finally a baron himself. He is good and noble although he lacks the skilled tongue and refined manners of a courtly aristocrat much to his wife's embarrassment. Eloise is quick to find all his faults, but she fails to see any of his strengths. She overlooks everything that would make her proud to have him as her husband -- the honor bestowed upon him by her father for having saved his life, the well tended fortress and the lands over which he presides, his ability as a warrior and a huntsman, his compassion for the peasantry, his devotion to a mother struck by blindness and encroaching madness, his love for her -- and sees Robert only as a disappointing match. Consumed by her sadness, she wishes to return home and, like a modern woman, be free.

As a medieval tale, this story is almost completely historically accurate, and it is very believable.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A story of a teen married off to a man twice her age, March 10, 2004

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Song for Eloise (Hardcover)

Ages 12 and up will appreciate Song For Eloise, a story of a teen married off to a man twice her age and transported to a lonely castle to live. Her involvement with a childhood friend brings newfound romance and dangers in this vivid, realistic story of medieval times and passion which brings the 12th century world to life.