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THE STORY
A young American graduate is engaged as an au pair by a couple who live in an old village manor house outside Paris. They need her to look after their daughter while they make preparations to relocate to Boston, where the husband, Hugo, is about to take up a university teaching post. The girl’s fantasy that she will be living in some sort of French Impressionist painting for a couple of months, all sunflowers and periwinkle shutters, is quickly dispelled when she discovers that the house is rundown and the village is an industrial sprawl. But she finds herself being drawn to Hugo, a relationship that appears to be encouraged by his wife.
So begins a series of intertwined stories spanning over 100 years, from the late 19th century to the recent past, about characters with links to the once-grand house and its estate. The result is a moving tapestry of unwise love affairs, marriages under pressure, shocking family secrets, the fallout from two world wars, disappointed ambitions and the challenges that make up life.
THE TASTER
Sweeping, suspenseful, rich with surprises and eerie atmosphere
‘It lasted a year. I’m aghast when I look back at myself: sitting at the breakfast table stirring the children’s hot chocolate, talking to my husband about taking the car in for a service, and then, a few hours later, lying on a hotel bed with my legs spread wide. What I did was wrong. Unforgivable. Sometimes, though, I think that I will never feel as alive as I did during those months of wickedness. Suddenly, I didn’t know who I was, and it was exhilarating.’
THE QUESTIONS
1. Do the stories hang together as a novel?
2. Which is your favourite story?
3. Is it easy to follow the connections between them?
4. Which characters do you find most sympathetic? Who would you like to have read more about?
5. How can a house affect the lives of the people who live in it?
6. What is the most significant event in the history of the manor house?
7. Do the changing fortunes of the house reflect events in society at large?
8. Is it a house you could imagine living in?
9. What is the book saying about the choices we face in life?
10. What is the significance of the book’s title?
THE AUTHOR
Author Jane Delury
Jane Delury grew up in Sacramento, California, in a family that travelled often on history-themed trips to the South Pacific and Europe, in particular to France. She started French lessons at an early age and continued to study the language as a literature major at the University of California Santa Cruz, during which time she spent time studying abroad in Grenoble at the foot of the French Alps, where she met her first husband, a fellow student. His grandparents lived on the edge of a forest resembling the one in The Balcony.
After graduating from UC Santa Cruz, Jane returned to Grenoble to obtain a maîtrise degree and continued to live in the city for the next few years, teaching English at the public university and at a private business school where, she says, she took a very literary approach to analysing Harvard Business Review case studies.
Jane began to write short stories in Grenoble and to publish them in the US. When she was accepted at the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars, she and her then-husband moved to Baltimore. After completing her MA, Jane began to teach fiction at The University of Baltimore, where she is now an associate professor and directs the BA in English programme.
Jane’s stories have appeared in numerous literary journals, including The Southern Review and The Yale Review and her awards include the F Scott Fitzgerald Story Award. She continues to live in Baltimore with her two daughters, Margot and Rose, and the writer Don Lee, whom she married barefoot on a cold and foggy San Francisco beach last summer. When she isn’t writing, teaching, or being a mother, she is deep in the wilds of her small garden in a sunhat, trying to distinguish wildflower from weed.