Free (Kindle) Thalia by Frances Faviell [Vintage Literary 1930s Expat Coming of Age]

[ATDrake]

Thalia by Frances Faviell, a pseudonym for the late British author and painter Olivia Faviell Lucas, is her vintage historical literary coming of age/journey of self-discovery drama novel set during the 1930s, starring a young London art student who travels to France to act as the paid companion to a woman whose husband is stationed in India, and befriends the troubled teenaged daughter of the family as they both experience the pains of growing up in various ways, as well as assorted excursions in France, free for a limited time courtesy of publisher Dean Street Press.

This has previously been offered free in 2016.

This was originally published in 1957 by Cassell, and this reprint edition contains a bonus newspaper story originally published in the London Evening Standard in 1957 and teased as a “guess if it's fact or fiction” piece, The Unininvited Guest, set in India, which the author visited during her travels in the 1930s.. You can also read more about the history of the late author and this particular novel in this tribute post over at the publisher's sub-imprint blog.

Currently free @ Amazon (available to Canadians & in the UK and pretty much everywhere else Amazon sells worldwide, since this is being done via their KDP Select exclusive-or-else program)

Description
Recovering from an illness, Rachel, an 18-year-old art student at the Slade in London, is advised to spend a year in a warm climate. She agrees to go to France to act as companion to Cynthia, a delicate, temperamental woman whose husband is in India, and her two children, troubled 15-year-old Thalia and spoiled young Claude. Thalia quickly becomes devoted to Rachel, but their friendship is strained by Rachel’s romance with the son of a well-to-do Breton family.

Though it’s the awkward, emotional Thalia who lends the novel its title, it’s Rachel on whom the novel centers, poignantly telling the tale of her sad first love, her dawning awareness of the vagaries and dishonesties of social life, and the tragedy she is powerless to prevent.

Set in Brittany in the mid-1930s, with an excursion to the cafés and artists’ studios of Montparnasse, Thalia is a dramatic and poignant tale by the author of A Chelsea Concerto. It includes an afterword by the author’s son, John Parker, and other supplementary material.