Season of Light
Katharine McMahon
Season of Light
1788. Asa Ardleigh, the impressionable daughter of a country squire, has travelled to Paris with her sister Philippa and Philippa's new husband. In the heady days before the Revolution, they find a city fizzing with new ideas - and Asa meets and falls in love with a dashing revolutionary, Didier Paulin. When Asa is forced to return to England, their affair is curtailed, but they continue to exchange letters as storm clouds gather over France and war with England looms.Back in England, no one knows of Asa's liaison as the family's financial worries put pressure on her to marry. But then disturbing news reaches Asa from France, and she must decide whether to follow her head or her heart...
4.0 out of 5 based on 3 reviews
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Omniscore:
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| Classification |
Fiction |
| Genre |
General Fiction |
| Format |
Paperback |
| Pages |
448 |
| RRP |
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| Date of Publication |
July 2012 |
| ISBN |
978-1780220130 |
| Publisher |
Pheonix |
| |
1788. Asa Ardleigh, the impressionable daughter of a country squire, has travelled to Paris with her sister Philippa and Philippa's new husband. In the heady days before the Revolution, they find a city fizzing with new ideas - and Asa meets and falls in love with a dashing revolutionary, Didier Paulin. When Asa is forced to return to England, their affair is curtailed, but they continue to exchange letters as storm clouds gather over France and war with England looms.
Back in England, no one knows of Asa's liaison as the family's financial worries put pressure on her to marry. But then disturbing news reaches Asa from France, and she must decide whether to follow her head or her heart...
Reviews
The Literary Review
David Annand
“Or, in Marcus’s case, compelling sentences, because you couldn’t call them pretty: they’re too knotted, too wilfully inelegant, too strange. They’re like the weirder looking supermodels – freakish, at-the-end-of-thespectrum, beautiful against the odds. It’s as if his writing style is a digest of his central point: are sentences still useful when they are being so thoroughly debased? Can the novel be saved? Is there a language for it? ”
01/07/2012
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The Daily Express
Vanessa Berridge
“In McMahon’s latest offering, Pride & Prejudice meets A Tale Of Two Cities and for an extra dash of intrigue The Scarlet Pimpernel … The novel is given depth and colour by the appearance of real historical figures, such as Corday and Mme de Genlis and by McMahon’s meticulous research and sense of period ... There are times when I find McMahon’s style almost bracingly chirpy but in the main this densely plotted novel is a spirited and engaging read.”
28/10/2011
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The Independent
Emma Hagestadt
“Louis XVI is dead and the horrors of the Terror have been unleashed. Finding herself in Caen, Didier's home town, Asa is introduced to Charlotte Corday (yet to surprise Marat in his bath) and witnesses ordinary citizens sent to the guillotine at the merest whisper of political incorrectness. More indebted to Georgette Heyer than Hilary Mantel, McMahon's gripping and intelligent novel does a neat job of introducing historical figures into its pages, but is ultimately more interested in the story of Asa's romantic plight. Asa may come across as naïve, but her final fate is not what you might expect. ”
13/12/2011
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