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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Not Enough Superlatives,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Way I Found Her (Paperback)
I really can't find enough superlatives to describe Rose Tremain's wonderful coming-of-age novel, The Way I Found Her. It's sweet, sexy, sad, funny, affectionate, tender, heartbreaking, engrossing and...perfect.The Way I Found Her is the first-person narrative of Lewis Little's rite-of-passage from the world of childhood to the world of the adult. Rose Tremain has done such a masterful job of bringing Lewis to life, one would almost think The Way I Found Her was a memoir rather than a novel. There is a wonderful mix of the child Lewis still is and the adult he is rapidly becoming. And, this mix is not only charming and endearing...it's believable. For me, Lewis Little is far more "real" and unforgettable than many more famous (and more highly-touted) literary characters. I really felt I knew Lewis inside and out; I could feel his fear, his hope, his pain, his joy. On its surface, The Way I Found Her may seem to be the story of a disappearance, but the disappearance itself actually plays a very small part in the story. Its importance lies in its impact on Lewis and in the way it changes him; this isn't a fun, little caper story, its definitely a portrait of one lovely and precocious boy's coming-of-age through his own "trial by fire." If there is one thread that runs through all of Tremain's novels, it seems to be one of isolation and loneliness. Lewis, like all of Tremain's protagonists is isolated and, in many respects, lonely. Lewis Little is charming and he is forced, through no fault of his own, to give up much of the innocence of childhood during the summer we spend with him in Paris, but he still has far to go before fully entering the cynical world of the adult. This makes him a rather unreliable narrator and an even less reliable detective. He makes wild assumptions, he is led down false paths, he devises outlandish hypotheses. Sometimes these work out, but more often than not, they don't. Still, Lewis, in grand thirteen-year old fashion, is unfazed. Those looking for a plot that races at breakneck speed should really look elsewhere. The Way I Found Her is, at its heart, an interior book. It is a chronicle of Lewis Little at age thirteen, (almost fourteen), and, as such, it is fascinating. Quite psychological and literary, The Way I Found Her bases its protagonist on an earlier one...one found in Le Grand Meaulnes, a very French book in which Lewis just happens to be engrossed. And, just as that book honored adolescence, especially male adolescence, so does The Way I Found Her. The Way I Found Her is first and foremost a superb story, written by an author who possesses superb storytelling skills. But it is also an endearing portrait of a young boy poised on the brink of adulthood who wants to fly and yet knows that in that flying he will relinquish something precious and irretrievable. The Way I Found Her is a book that tugs at your heart; Lewis Little is a character who burrows into your soul and stays there. This is a thoroughly enjoyable story and one that is also unforgettable.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Mystery, romance and literary intrigue,
This review is from: The Way I Found Her (Paperback)
Like Lewis Little, the hero (?) of this novel, I too spent my thirteenth year wandering around the streets and cafes of Paris as though in a wonderland of adulthood before my time. Happily, however, I wasn't caught up in love with a Russian novelist thirty years older than me, or kidnapped by...Rose Tremain has written a formidably intelligent romantic thriller, which evokes Paris perfectly, and says something important about the pain of adolescence. My favourite character is Didier the existentialist roofer. I loved his melancholy, and the way Lewis never had the heart to tell him that 'no one is an existentialist these days'. I also loved the neatness of the plot, in which everything seems to foreshadow later developments. It had me staying up till the small hours, unable to put the book down. I didn't care that Lewis, or the plot, are not entirely credible as 'real'. This is a novel, for heavens sake! Like the roof of the hospital chapel, where Didier accidentally killed his father, this book is a fantastic construction, to marvel at, not to pull apart.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
As Unforgettable as a Summer in Paris,
By
This review is from: The Way I Found Her (Paperback)
I can't remember the last time a book imprinted itself on my soul the way this one did. "The Way I Found Her" is a remarkable book - affecting on many different levels. Rose Tremain carries your spirit to a place in the way Hemnigway did - it's almost more real than actually being in Paris. You can smell the baguettes, feel the opressive summer heat, sense the sheer magic of the place. If this novel were nothing more than a travelogue of Paris it would be an amazing success.It's so much more than that, though - even as you're whisked away to Paris along with Lewis Little and his beautiful, enigmatic mother, you're whisked along by the story as well. Tremain weaves a deceptively complex tale of love, betrayal, loneliness and, finally, regret. As a novel "The Way I Found Her" flows smoothly and effortlessly as the Seine, never allowing your attention to drift from the events at hand. Most of all, though, this novel succeeds in the vivid portrait of the characters who grace it's pages. Lewis Little is the most interesting voice in many a years' fiction. Tremain does a stunning job of capturing the pure, unadultaerated passion of an adolescant boy, his senses opening up to the world around him as if for the first time. Adolescence is a natural vehicle for character drama because it's a time of change, and Lewis can feel change all around him - the life he knows is slipping away, the person he was along with it. This frightens him and exhilerates him at the same time, leaving him torn between a stubborn attatchment to his comfortable, child's life in Devon and the bold, exciting world of adult pleasures and sorrows he's just beginning to comprehend. Even as he slips farther away from the stranger his mother has become and the father who seems a million miles away, he falls under the spell of Valentina, the writer who'se latest novel Lewis' mother has come to Paris to translate. Valentina is one of the most vivid, larger than life characters ever to grace the page. He comes to love her as only an adolescant can, old enough to realize the futility of his desire but unable to resist. She's a marvel - a bosomy, dizzying melange of cigarette smoke, infectious laughter, surprising warmth and a mysterious, exotic and sorrowful past which Lewis comes to understand all too well. Finally, Tremain's Paris is filled with a collection of unforgettable supporting characters - Didier, the philosopher/roofer; Grisha, the bitter, mororse Russian writer; Moinel, the dapper, inquisitive yet guarded neighbor; Sergei, the "brilliant dog" who becomes Lewis' constant companion; and Babba, the immigrant maid who becomes Lewis' confidant. Not least of all, this Paris - in Lewis' fertile mind - is alive with the images of Francois Suerel and "Le Grand Meaulnes" (which serves as a framework for the novel), of Porfiry Petrovich and "Crime and Punishment", which serves as the inspiration for Lewis' improbable quest. This novel is a triumph - an emotional roller coaster ride through one summer in Paris and the ending of one boy's childhood. After what Lewis experiences in Paris he'll never be the same. After sharing the experience, neither will you.
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