The Velvet Hours
(Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read)
As Paris teeters on the edge of the German occupation, a young French woman closes the door to her late grandmother’s treasure-filled apartment, unsure if she’ll ever return.
An elusive courtesan, Marthe de Florian cultivated a life of art and beauty, casting out all recollections of her impoverished childhood in the dark alleys of Montmartre. With Europe on the brink of war, she shares her story with her granddaughter Solange Beaugiron, using her prized possessions to reveal her innermost secrets. Most striking of all are a beautiful string of pearls and a magnificent portrait of Marthe painted by the Italian artist Giovanni Boldini. As Marthe’s tale unfolds, like velvet itself, stitched with its own shadow and light, it helps to guide Solange on her own path.
Inspired by the true account of an abandoned Parisian apartment, Alyson Richman brings to life Solange, the young woman forced to leave her fabled grandmother’s legacy behind to save all that she loved.
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Alyson Richman. (2016). The Velvet Hours. Penguin Publishing Group.
Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)Alyson Richman. 2016. The Velvet Hours. Penguin Publishing Group.
Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)Alyson Richman, The Velvet Hours. Penguin Publishing Group, 2016.
MLA Citation (style guide)Alyson Richman. The Velvet Hours. Penguin Publishing Group, 2016.
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- From the international bestselling author of The Lost Wife and The Garden of Letters, comes a story—inspired by true events—of two women pursuing freedom and independence in Paris during WWII.
As Paris teeters on the edge of the German occupation, a young French woman closes the door to her late grandmother’s treasure-filled apartment, unsure if she’ll ever return.
An elusive courtesan, Marthe de Florian cultivated a life of art and beauty, casting out all recollections of her impoverished childhood in the dark alleys of Montmartre. With Europe on the brink of war, she shares her story with her granddaughter Solange Beaugiron, using her prized possessions to reveal her innermost secrets. Most striking of all are a beautiful string of pearls and a magnificent portrait of Marthe painted by the Italian artist Giovanni Boldini. As Marthe’s tale unfolds, like velvet itself, stitched with its own shadow and light, it helps to guide Solange on her own path.
Inspired by the true account of an abandoned Parisian apartment, Alyson Richman brings to life Solange, the young woman forced to leave her fabled grandmother’s legacy behind to save all that she loved. - reviews
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Starred review from September 26, 2016
In this exploration of sensuality, beauty, and the lives of heirlooms, two women narrate a rich tale set in Paris during the 19th and 20th centuries. In 2010, a time capsule of sorts was uncovered in Paris’s ninth arrondissement: an apartment untouched since WWII and filled with treasures of a bygone age. Richman (The Garden of Letters), in her fifth novel, fills in the details of this intriguing mystery by imagining the life and loves of the apartment’s real-life inhabitant, courtesan Marthe de Florian. On the eve of WWII, Marthe recites her adventures in the half-world of belle epoque Paris, where she began as an impoverished seamstress and ended up a demimondaine, to her granddaughter Solange, a budding writer. Solange has her own story to tell; the world she thought she knew is unraveling, and Solange’s mother recently revealed her Jewish heritage before dying. Hoping to understand her past, Solange takes a precious book from her mother’s collection to a rare book dealer. There she meets Alec, the son of the book dealer, and slowly begins to fall in love. Meanwhile, Hitler’s troops draw closer to Paris, her father is conscripted, and Marthe’s health begins to fail. Richman fills her novel with vibrant details (including some of the more juicy bits from Marthe’s real life), much as Marthe decorated her apartment: always with care, craft, and a sharp eye.
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July 1, 2016
In 2010, an apartment in Paris was unlocked for the first time in seven decades, revealing a time capsule from the Belle Epoque. The apartment had been owned by one Marthe de Florian, and among its contents was a previously unknown portrait of her by the painter Giovanni Boldini. In Richman's telling, Marthe's granddaughter, Solange, is first introduced to her grandmother on the eve of WWII and decides to write a novel based on her life. Chapters detailing Marthe's reinvention of herself from seamstress to chorus girl to glamorous and artistically inclined demimondaine with a passion for Asian porcelains alternate with those narrated by Solange, who, thanks to some old volumes that belonged to her mother, discovers her Jewish heritage and falls in love with Alex, a Jewish dealer in rare books. Though the story sags under the weight of period and historical detail, lush descriptions of beautiful things help create a sensual reading experience. Readers who are intrigued by Marthe's apartment may also be interested in Michelle Gables' A Paris Apartment (2014).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)
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As Paris teeters on the edge of the German occupation, a young French woman closes the door to her late grandmother’s treasure-filled apartment, unsure if she’ll ever return.
An elusive courtesan, Marthe de Florian cultivated a life of art and beauty, casting out all recollections of her impoverished childhood in the dark alleys of Montmartre. With Europe on the brink of war, she shares her story with her granddaughter Solange Beaugiron, using her prized possessions to reveal her innermost secrets. Most striking of all are a beautiful string of pearls and a magnificent portrait of Marthe painted by the Italian artist Giovanni Boldini. As Marthe’s tale unfolds, like velvet itself, stitched with its own shadow and light, it... - sortTitle
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