The Valentine House
Failed to add items
Add to basket failed.
Add to wishlist failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
£0.00 for first 30 days
The Valentine House
Buy Now for £17.99
No valid payment method on file.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Karen Cass
-
By:
-
Emma Henderson
About this listen
In June 1914, Sir Anthony Valentine, a keen mountaineer, arrives with his family to spend the summer in their chalet, high in the French Alps. There, for the first time, 14-year-old foundling Mathilde starts work as one of the 'uglies' - village girls employed as servants and picked, it is believed, to ensure they don't catch Sir Anthony's roving eye.
For Mathilde it is the start of a lifelong entanglement with les anglais - strange, exciting people far removed from the hard grind of farming. Except she soon finds the Valentines are less carefree than they appear, with a curiously absent daughter no one talks about. It will be decades - disrupted by war, accidents and a cruel betrayal - before Mathilde discovers the key to the mystery. And in 1976, the year Sir Anthony's great-great-grandson comes to visit, she must decide whether to use it.
Vividly evoking the dramatic landscape that so enthrals the Valentines, this deeply involving, intriguing novel tells the story of an English family through the generations and a memorable French woman, whose lives seem worlds apart yet which become inextricably connected.
©2017 Emma Henderson (P)2018 W.F. Howes LtdListeners also enjoyed...
Critic reviews
"Henderson's Grace Williams Says It Loud was shortlisted for the Orange Prize and this more than matches it." (Elizabeth Buchan, Daily Mail)