Thalia

You are a virgin? Yes. How dull! Whats the use of being a woman if youre a virgin? One has to begin sometime I agreed. Recovering from an illness Rachel an 18-year-old art student at the Slade in London is advised to spend a year in a warm climate. She agrees to go to France to act as companion to Cynthia a delicate temperamental woman whose husband is in India and her two children troubled 15-year-old Thalia and spoiled young Claude. Thalia quickly becomes devoted to Rachel but their friendship is strained by Rachels romance with the son of a well-to-do Breton family. Though its the awkward emotional Thalia who lends the novel its title its Rachel on whom the novel centers poignantly telling the tale of her sad first love her dawning awareness of the vagaries and dishonesties of social life and the tragedy she is powerless to prevent. Set in Brittany in the mid-1930s with an excursion to the cafés and artists studios of Montparnasse Thalia is a dramatic and poignant tale by the author of A Chelsea Concerto. It includes an afterword by the authors son John Parker and other supplementary material. Mrs. Faviell ... writes with grace and sensibility; this young new world of first experiences is brought back and set down with a fresh touch and while shadowed by tragedy it is eminently pleasant to follow. Kirkus Reviews She writes with a sharpness of outline which would not shame Simenon. J.W. Lambert Sunday Times