READERS GUIDE

The questions, discussion topics, and suggested reading list that follow are intended to enhance your group’s reading of The Girl at the Lion d’Or a novel by Sebastian Faulks, author of the number-one international bestseller Birdsong. We hope they will enrich your understanding and enjoyment of this greatly acclaimed work.

Introduction

In The Girl at the Lion d’Or we witness the compromise and unease of France in the years leading up to the Second World War through the eyes of Anne Louvet, a courageous and passionate young girl. When Anne was still a child her life was all but wrecked by the atrocities of World War I, which destroyed her family and the love and security of her small world. Grown now, alone and adrift in a country that is itself adrift in the deepest moral sense, Anne must make her own way. Her search for love and a place in the world demand all her courage, and all her hope.

Questions and Topics for Discussion

1. How would you characterize the climate of inter-war France—the period historian Eugen Weber has called "The Hollow Years"—as described by Faulks? In what way was the period "hollow," and why? What elements of the defeatist, cynical France of the Occupation can you trace here, several years before World War II? In what ways are the Stavisky affair and the death of Roger Salengro indicative of the political atmosphere?

2. Hartmann is disturbed by Anne’s life story, particularly the "unfairness of the persecution of the villagers" [p. 158]. Why did these villagers persecute Anne’s family? Was it from pure meanness, or out of some unspoken fear or perceived threat? If Anne’s hometown and her adopted town of Janvilliers are typical of provincial French life at this period, what are that life’s drawbacks? What are its strengths?

3. How do Anne’s political opinions [see p. 183] reflect those of the country in general, and how do those opinions account for the country’s precarious state? What dangers do these opinions, when held by a large portion of the population, imply for France? What about Roland’s opinions [pp. 190-92]? How deeply has he thought out his political ideas? Does he have any understanding of where such ideas will lead? Is he evil, or simply unintelligent and thoughtless?

4. What connections, if any, does the author draw between Roger Salengro and Anne’s father?

5. Why does Hartmann turn away from Anne at the end? Is it from selfishness and cowardice or out of a sense of duty and a sort of love? What sort of future do you envision for Anne? What might become of her as France moves toward war?

About this Author

Sebastian Faulks was born in Newbury, England, in 1953, and educated at various schools and at Cambridge University, from which he graduated in 1974 with the intention of becoming a novelist. He took a job teaching in a school in London and began to write freelance articles, mostly book reviews, for various papers. In 1978 he left teaching to take a job as a reporter with the Daily Telegraph in London. By this time he was also running a book club, the New Fiction Society, and continued to write fiction.

His first novel, A Trick of Light, was published in 1984. By this time he had become a feature writer on the Sunday Telegraph and in 1986 moved to the new national daily paper the Independent as its literary editor. His second novel, The Girl at the Lion d’Or, was published in 1989.

In 1991 he gave up journalism to concentrate on writing. In 1992 his third novel, A Fool’s Alphabet, was published in London, and in 1993 he published Birdsong to huge critical acclaim. In January 1997 a television and bookshop poll among British readers placed it in their top fifty books of the century. He was named Author of the Year in the British Book Awards of 1995.

His nonfiction book, The Fatal Englishman: Three Short Lives, was published in 1996, Charlotte Gray two years later; both these books were also bestsellers.

Sebastian Faulks has been married since 1989 and has three children. After a period in France, the Faulks family now lives in London.