![]() ![]() His hormones surging, Lewis develops a crush on Valentina even as he is becoming estranged from Alice, who has embarked on an affair with a roofer called Diderot, a budding philosopher who teaches Lewis the basics of existentialism. Initially reluctant, Lewis is smitten by the beauties of Paris and by the bewitching (though 40-ish) Valentina, who comes up to his attic bedroom at night and listens to his halting translation of the classic, neo-romantic Alain-Fournier fable, Le Grand Meaulnes, which, in an ironic plot twist, is to have enormous relevance to Lewis's life. Lewis Little and his mother, Alice, leave their home in Devon to spend the summer in Paris, where Alice will translate wealthy Russian expatriate writer Valentina Gavrilovich's latest medieval romance. Tremain takes risks in making the protagonist of her new novel a clever, precocious and inquisitive 13-year-old boy, but this gifted writer (Restoration) succeeds brilliantly in creating an intensely imagined and sophisticated story. ![]()
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