Helpful Score: 1
This is the story of Emily Stanton Elder who has made a hasty marriage to Georges Elder, participated in an act of adultery and finds herself in an unplanned pregnancy. It starts in Australia and moves to Paris and Tunisia during the 1920s.
Emilys father is an engineer with high hopes for his daughter, academically. Much to his chagrin, Emily agrees to marry Georges Elder, an engineer who dreams of designing the Sydney Harbor bridge rather than continuing her studies in history.
Emily leaves her family in Australia and travels to live in Paris with Georges. She lives a lonely life as Georges life is devoted to his bid for the Sydney Harbor bridge. Her only friend is Antoine Carpeaux, a friend of her husbands. He gives her a relic that was found at an excavation site in Tunisia.
While visiting her husbands mother Chartres, she has a tryst with a local priest. Shortly after that she finds out that she is pregnant. She is not certain that her husband is the father of this child and in the meantime, the priest she had her encounter with has inadvertently befriended her fathers mother and his sister in Chartres.
Concerned for her health, her husband insists that she travel with Antoine to Tunisia.
While there, she meets an American scholar and learns that there is an alternative story about St Perpetua, an early saint who was martyred in the area. This is the site where the relic Antoine has given her was found.
Upon her return to Paris, she begins to do research on Perpetua with the intent to write a paper on an alternative reason as to why she allowed herself to be martyred. These efforts of hers are frowned upon by her husband as well as most people who see the very pregnant Emily at the library on a daily basis.
In an effort to have a confrontation with the priest, she travels to Chartres during the eighth month of her pregnancy. When she arrives in Chartres, she goes into labor and delivers a daughter.
After the birth of her daughter, Emily realizes that she must make a definite decision about what she wants to do with her life.
While I enjoyed the book, I had a very difficult time understanding Emily. It is never clear why she chose to marry Georges rather than pursue her studies. There didnt seem to be any real reason why the characters behaved or believed as they did outside of an assumed this is how men and women of this age (the 1920s) would behave. It was difficult to feel for Emily when it seemed that she didnt really have any feeling herself.
Emilys father is an engineer with high hopes for his daughter, academically. Much to his chagrin, Emily agrees to marry Georges Elder, an engineer who dreams of designing the Sydney Harbor bridge rather than continuing her studies in history.
Emily leaves her family in Australia and travels to live in Paris with Georges. She lives a lonely life as Georges life is devoted to his bid for the Sydney Harbor bridge. Her only friend is Antoine Carpeaux, a friend of her husbands. He gives her a relic that was found at an excavation site in Tunisia.
While visiting her husbands mother Chartres, she has a tryst with a local priest. Shortly after that she finds out that she is pregnant. She is not certain that her husband is the father of this child and in the meantime, the priest she had her encounter with has inadvertently befriended her fathers mother and his sister in Chartres.
Concerned for her health, her husband insists that she travel with Antoine to Tunisia.
While there, she meets an American scholar and learns that there is an alternative story about St Perpetua, an early saint who was martyred in the area. This is the site where the relic Antoine has given her was found.
Upon her return to Paris, she begins to do research on Perpetua with the intent to write a paper on an alternative reason as to why she allowed herself to be martyred. These efforts of hers are frowned upon by her husband as well as most people who see the very pregnant Emily at the library on a daily basis.
In an effort to have a confrontation with the priest, she travels to Chartres during the eighth month of her pregnancy. When she arrives in Chartres, she goes into labor and delivers a daughter.
After the birth of her daughter, Emily realizes that she must make a definite decision about what she wants to do with her life.
While I enjoyed the book, I had a very difficult time understanding Emily. It is never clear why she chose to marry Georges rather than pursue her studies. There didnt seem to be any real reason why the characters behaved or believed as they did outside of an assumed this is how men and women of this age (the 1920s) would behave. It was difficult to feel for Emily when it seemed that she didnt really have any feeling herself.
