It’s two or three days since I finished reading Valley of Grace, and I’m still savouring the reading of it. It’s always such a pleasure to read Marion Halligan’s novels … I save them up when a new one comes along and wait to read them in the same way that I save a box of expensive chocolates for just the right moment.

Valley of Grace is not the first of Halligan’s novels to be set in Paris. The Golden Dress (1998) was too, but I hadn’t been there when I read it and though I loved the novel, its Parisian textures just added to the constant temptation to swap the mortgage for a suitcase. Now, (having vanquished the mortgage) I’ve had the pleasure of visiting Paris three times, and Halligan’s lyrical descriptions make me want to sell up my dear little house that I took so long to buy – so that I might rent an apartment somewhere in that gorgeous city. Halligan is a seductress with her pen…

Fanny is married to Gérard Tisserand who is a restorer of old buildings. Halligan makes even this grubby renovation process seem romantic. Fanny’s father – a developer of modern buildings – had spoken disparagingly of Gérard but for Fanny it is love at first sight:

The building is not in some crooked street but in the rue St Jacques. Fanny walks through the small oval place in front of the Val de Grâce and just past it is the building, eighteenth-century, five-storey, classical. It is a wreck, in the process of being gutted. A segmented orange worm descends from the top floor, a set of elongated bottomless buckets chained together, through which rubble is poured into a hopper in the street. It rattles and crunches all the way until the final clanging arrival in the hopper, and quantities of dust arrive. Gérard Tisserand Builder, says a banner hung from the balcony.

Against the façade is a ladder and she sees a man she supposes to be Gérard though not so swarthy, not so nuggety, run up it, balance on a windowsill, sway, lean out and look up, climb in. Fanny pauses to read unseeing a plaque on the wall of the building next door. Gérard appears again, walks along a windowsill, teeters. Fanny’s heart teeters too. (p. 10)

Theirs is a loving marriage. They make love a lot, but they haven’t yet made a baby, and Halligan captures Fanny’s anxiety without morbidly lingering over it. Fanny is not the only one to want a baby: there are two same-sex couples in this novel, and Claude and Agnès want Luc and Julien to help them be parents too. Then there is elegant Sabine, graciously complicit in her husband the Professor’s routine seduction of his female students: she submits to this in much the same way as she has submitted to all his other rules including that over the course of their long marriage there may never be any children to interfere with the Great Man’s Thinking. But accidents happen and Sabine behaves in a way that startles her friend Cathérine, Fanny’s mother. I was enchanted by this rebellion…

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2014/02/08/valley-of-grace-by-marion-halligan/ ( )

Patchy. Very good at its best. Only so-so at other times. Definitely worth reading . At times I felt like I was being given a lesson about French culture and history, or that maybe the author was writing the book during a stay in France funded by the French Tourism Council. Nonetheless, there were quite a few really worthwhile sections which focused on relationships - of many different types and styles: gay and straight, good and not-so-good, mature and developing, between adults, and between parents & children, etc Quite a few 'issues' were raised - all of them dealt with well, although not always deeply enough for my liking. I'd probably have preferred a smaller cast and greater depth. But this, my first ever Halligan book, was good enough for me to try another of her works. ( )

Like it’s delicate burnished cover, Valley of Grace has an understated richness. It’s a quiet novel in that there is little overt dialogue, and the action takes place slowly, carefully, observed through the gentle lens of its main character Fanny. The novel is set in Paris, and, like its characters, the city is seen through a soft focus that only a loving visitor could provide. It’s a Paris of renovation, of food markets full of exquisite produce, of antiquarian bookshops and wonderful, magical chocolate shops. Fanny is interested in the history of the buildings around her, and these interests and tidbits of historical fact are conveyed to the reader. Fanny fits her Paris beautifully. She’s graceful, slender, well dressed in dark, sophisticated clothing that hugs her frame. But underneath the attractive exterior, there is a very human longing. Fanny and Gérard are happily married, but aren’t finding it easy to conceive a child.

The novel is structured as a series of almost independent short stories. The key story and linking linchpin is the story of Fanny and Gérard. Other stories include the tale of Luc and Julian, the story of Severine, Thierry and their two children, the story of Jean-Marie, the great philosophy professor, and his long suffering wife Sabine. All are love stories of a sort, involving a couple, children, and parents, and the relationships contained within these small family units. The progression of the novel happens as each of these stories is stretched to allow for the progression and change that time inevitably brings, but it all happens organically. The interweaving of the stories, where the protagonist of one becomes a minor character in another, is done with great deftness. We get to know the characters through a number of different perspectives that change, depending on whose story is being focused on. The perfect webs of these relationships are torn in tiny ways, and then reform to become something slightly different, and then that changes again. It’s a theme that Halligan uses to draw the novel together.

Luc runs the antiquarian bookstore that Fanny works in, and is involved in a loving relationship with Julian, who lives with him upstairs. Julian is a nurse, and his idea of what constitutes a strong relationship isn’t the same as Luc’s. Their story unfolds in parallel to the story of Fanny and Gérard, bisecting at odd moments. Fanny’s mother Cathérine is friends with Sabine, who is married to the wealthy and well-respected philosopher Jean-Marie, but his life, like Cathérine’s, isn’t exactly as it seems. There are indelicacies, allowances, and indulgencies that Jean-Marie demands, and Sabine plays her part with glamour and decorum as per the “rules”, but that’s not enough to keep down the demands of her heart. Accidents happen, and the rules are broken. Sabine changes. Jean-Marie changes. And Cathérine too changes as she delves into the secrets of her past, learning about the people she thought she knew and finding out about ones she didn’t in a way that links her with the past and reconciles her with the present.

Though the novel remains controlled and elegant throughout, never losing the grace hinted at by the title, there are mysteries that unfold in its progression, and there are pregnancies, both real and metaphoric, that gestate. Sometimes the gestation is quite a long one, and sometimes there are things that must be resolved first, before new life can come along. Cathérine and her daughter Fanny travel to the Véresac of Cathérine’s youth, to discover the history of Fanny’s grandfather Fleuret, who was a member of the Resistance during World War II and shot by the Germans when Cathérine was a young girl. The way in which Halligan maps the generations together, pairing and comparing mother and daughter is moving and satisfying. The stories may or may not end happily. In Valley of Grace, nothing is absolute. All happiness has an element of sadness, and all sadness has a positive edge. There is disappointment and there is satisfaction. Both are sides of the same coin. All stories meet up at some intersection. This is a novel full of grace, and it has many charms, quiet though they might be, for the reader. The depictions of both city and country France are rich and tender. So too, as Halligan fans would expect, are the sensual descriptions that fill this book, from Fanny and Gérard's love scenes, to the delicious pastries, chocolates, and regional dishes that the characters eat. Valley of Grace is a delightful genre-transcending book full of joy and sorrow. It’s easy to read and slow to digest: the perfect combination.

I can't fault this book, from its beautiful binding to the Parisian setting, I just soaked it in. I have read several revues that describe this as a series of short stories. I didn't find it so. It looks at the relationships of several couples, linked by family and frienship, and their desire or not to have children. Although the focus changes from couple to couple, the story progresses them all through several years. There are revelations along the way, events alluded to but not revealed.
Marion Halligan writes with delicacy and deftness, leading us to contemplate the reality of children in our lives and the hope for the future that is so indubitably linked with them. A very special book. ( )

Like it’s delicate burnished cover, Valley of Grace has an understated richness. It’s a quiet novel in that there is little overt dialogue, and the action takes place slowly, carefully, observed through the gentle lens of its main character Fanny. The novel is set in Paris, and, like its characters, the city is seen through a soft focus that only a loving visitor could provide. It’s a Paris of renovation, of food markets full of exquisite produce, of antiquarian bookshops and wonderful, magical chocolate shops. Fanny is interested in the history of the buildings around her, and these interests and tidbits of historical fact are conveyed to the reader. Fanny fits her Paris beautifully. She’s graceful, slender, well dressed in dark, sophisticated clothing that hugs her frame. But underneath the attractive exterior, there is a very human longing. Fanny and Gérard are happily married, but aren’t finding it easy to conceive a child.The novel is structured as a series of almost independent short stories. The key story and linking linchpin is the story of Fanny and Gérard. Other stories include the tale of Luc and Julian, the story of Severine, Thierry and their two children, the story of Jean-Marie, the great philosophy professor, and his long suffering wife Sabine. All are love stories of a sort, involving a couple, children, and parents, and the relationships contained within these small family units. The progression of the novel happens as each of these stories is stretched to allow for the progression and change that time inevitably brings, but it all happens organically. The interweaving of the stories, where the protagonist of one becomes a minor character in another, is done with great deftness. We get to know the characters through a number of different perspectives that change, depending on whose story is being focused on. The perfect webs of these relationships are torn in tiny ways, and then reform to become something slightly different, and then that changes again. It’s a theme that Halligan uses to draw the novel together.Luc runs the antiquarian bookstore that Fanny works in, and is involved in a loving relationship with Julian, who lives with him upstairs. Julian is a nurse, and his idea of what constitutes a strong relationship isn’t the same as Luc’s. Their story unfolds in parallel to the story of Fanny and Gérard, bisecting at odd moments. Fanny’s mother Cathérine is friends with Sabine, who is married to the wealthy and well-respected philosopher Jean-Marie, but his life, like Cathérine’s, isn’t exactly as it seems. There are indelicacies, allowances, and indulgencies that Jean-Marie demands, and Sabine plays her part with glamour and decorum as per the “rules”, but that’s not enough to keep down the demands of her heart. Accidents happen, and the rules are broken. Sabine changes. Jean-Marie changes. And Cathérine too changes as she delves into the secrets of her past, learning about the people she thought she knew and finding out about ones she didn’t in a way that links her with the past and reconciles her with the present.Though the novel remains controlled and elegant throughout, never losing the grace hinted at by the title, there are mysteries that unfold in its progression, and there are pregnancies, both real and metaphoric, that gestate. Sometimes the gestation is quite a long one, and sometimes there are things that must be resolved first, before new life can come along. Cathérine and her daughter Fanny travel to the Véresac of Cathérine’s youth, to discover the history of Fanny’s grandfather Fleuret, who was a member of the Resistance during World War II and shot by the Germans when Cathérine was a young girl. The way in which Halligan maps the generations together, pairing and comparing mother and daughter is moving and satisfying. The stories may or may not end happily. In Valley of Grace, nothing is absolute. All happiness has an element of sadness, and all sadness has a positive edge. There is disappointment and there is satisfaction. Both are sides of the same coin. All stories meet up at some intersection. This is a novel full of grace, and it has many charms, quiet though they might be, for the reader. The depictions of both city and country France are rich and tender. So too, as Halligan fans would expect, are the sensual descriptions that fill this book, from Fanny and Gérard's love scenes, to the delicious pastries, chocolates, and regional dishes that the characters eat. Valley of Grace is a delightful genre-transcending book full of joy and sorrow. It’s easy to read and slow to digest: the perfect combination.