Bonjour Sophie
It’s 1959 and eighteen-year-old Sophie is determined that now is the time for her real life to start. Her existence in the village of Poynsdean, Sussex, with her austere foster-father, the Reverend Osbert Knox, and his frustrated wife Alice, is stultifying. She finds diversion and excitement in a love affair, but soon realizes that if she wants to live life on a bigger canvas she must take matters into her own hands.
She dreams of escape to Paris, the Wartime home her French mother fled before her birth. Getting there will take spirit and ingenuity, but also offers the chance to discover more about her family background, and perhaps find a place where she can finally belong.
When Sophie eventually arrives in the city of her dreams it’s both everything she imagined, and not at all what she expected.
Reviews
A glorious read! So evocative. Conjures the excitement of Paris so vividly that the reader cannot fail to be swept along on the journey. A magical coming-of-age story. I loved it!
What a memorable and emotionally charged novel…Elizabeth Buchan is skilled at exploring moral complexities big and small. As a novelist she is psychologically subtle, interested in how people face up to compromise and challenges, rather than simple solutions. This is an immersive, sensory, page-turning experience.
One of my favourite authors and someone I go to for that alchemy of story and fabulous writing. A wonderful book – warm, compassionate and nuanced. I loved it.
Elizabeth Buchan’s books are always original, beautifully written and page turning. BONJOUR, SOPHIE is just as wonderful, unlike anything I’ve read before. I loved it.
Huge congratulations on such a wonderful novel. BONJOUR SOPHIE is a coming-of-age novel and yet it is so much more. Intimate yet expansive…with exquisite writing and sense of place, Buchan weaves her narrative into a mystery that must be solved. A wonderful, engrossing, tear-jerking and joyful read.
You'll adore meeting Sophie in this delightful, funny, poignant story that's suffused with the atmosphere of Paris on the cusp of the Sixties.
A beautiful and poignant coming-of age-story that whisks you away on a magical journey to Paris
What a rich and enthralling read. I gunned for Sophie every inch of the way. (Even if I agree with Het that it was wrong to call Johnno!) Lizy’s writing is so accomplished, so graceful and lyrical. In the earlier chapters I felt as though I was being swept away by the power of a modern Thomas Hardy. Lizy's descriptions of the land and the nature are so evocative. And how she traces the tenderness and naïveté of Sophie's young heart ...This is a coming of age story set in magical locations with a heroine you cannot resist falling in love with. It is a novel that will appeal to all ages. A sure hit.
This is a coming-of-age story steeped in wisdom with an incredible sense of time and place, whether the setting is a beautiful but stifling English village or the dizzying streets of Paris.
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