On Green Dolphin Street: A Novel | Sebastian Faulks

On Green Dolphin Street: A Novel | Sebastian Faulks | Good love story in a great setting

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On Green Dolphin S...

	On Green Dolphin Street: A Novel Sebastian Faulks Vintage, 2003 - 368 pages average customer review:based on 9 reviews view larger image
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The bestselling author of Birdsong and Charlotte Gray delivers an enthralling, vibrantly evocative novel set in America in 1960, when the country stood poised between the paranoia of the Cold War and the ebullience of the New Frontier.

Faulks' heroine is Mary Van der Linden, a pretty, reserved Englishwoman whose husband, Charlie, is posted to the British embassy in Washington. One night at a cocktail party Mary meets Frank Renzo, a reporter who has covered stories from the fall of Dienbienphu to the Emmett Till murder trial in Mississippi. Slowly, reluctantly, they fall in love. Their ensuing affair, in all its desperate elation, plays out against a backdrop that ranges from the jazz clubs of Greenwich Village to the smoke-filled rooms of the Kennedy campaign. A romance in the grand tradition that is also a neon-lit portrait of America at its apogee, On Green Dolphin Street is Sebastian Faulks at the peak of his powers.

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Haunting

I found that this book wouldn't let go. I found it hard to pick up another book as this one simply haunted me. His characters, and the era he evoked, became impossible to shake off. Magnificent.

Good love story in a great setting

On Green Dolphin Street tells the story of a long triangle between Mary van del Linden, her husband Charlie, and Frank Renzo, a New York journalist. As important as the characters is the historical setting, which is America during the Nixon-Kennedy campaign. Faulks creates three vivid characters, each with their own motivations and weaknesses, and paints a love story that is passionate and filled with longing, but also with resignation.

What I liked about the book is the sense of urgency it creates and the mood it is set in. Among the main characters, Charlie is the one I felt more interesting. I also enjoyed the sections set in England when Mary's mother dies, how her feeling are wonderfully explored. Faulk's prose is literate although sometimes he gets too wordly when he describes the characters' thoughts, rendering them unreal. Also, I wasn't very interested in the politics.

All in all, a good read. Faulks proves his versatility with this novel. Don't expect another Birdsong though!

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Great book--but not my favorite!

On Green Dolphin Street

Never thought the 60's could be interesting, but Sebastian Faulks manages to write about this politically turbulent time in a very intriguing manner. This novel is both a post-war/cold-war psychological study and a full throttle story of love's infidelity. It is always enjoying to read Faulks' British perspective, in On Green Dolphin Street it is particularly interesting to see America through these British eyes; particularly the Kennedy era. Mary is a well-developed character who provides a portal to a wealth of human emotion ranging from her strong attachment to her children, her moral struggles as the wife of an alcoholic and her wrenching grief when faced with death/dying.
This novel is quieter than all of Sebastian Faulks' other novels, but its message is just as deep and meaningful while delivering a history steeped in fact.

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reviews: page 1, 2

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