Product Description

Two children, strangers, wait in a house in Paris: Leopold for his mother, whom he has never seen, and Henrietta for a train. Upstairs an old woman lies dying and her daughter flutters round her. The author exposes the apprehensions of the children and the reasons for their presence in the house.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3090221 in Books
• Published on: 1987-03-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

From Library Journal
This 1935 novel is considered among Bowen's best. Eleven-year-old Henrietta is visting the Fisher family in Paris. The character of the city, however, has nothing on the characters inside the residence, including Leopold, a child; his unusual mother; a dead father who has as much presence as any of the living; and an old man dying in bed. There's something dark about the goings-on here, which Henrietta learns firsthand.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
Psychological novel with something of Evelyn Scott's ability to create suspense out of place. There's a haunting fascination about it, that lays hold of the readers - and that carries one back to now one part, now another, in retrospect. One feels overpowering curiosity from the moment the two children meet - and the recreation of the past is convincingly and beautifully handled, with no sense of anticlimax such as often attends the precarious balancing of a story within a story. A big step in technique and handling over her previous novels. The jacket is somewhat misleading, it seems to me; it would lead one to expect a somewhat frivolous, flippant story, rather than the strange blend of tragedy and humor which it is. Just a passing suggestion of the Lesbian theme, this time; unimportant. (Kirkus Reviews)

Review
“Her most atmospheric book . . . very eerie and richly descriptive.” –Daily Telegraph (London)

“Bowen has flashes of the authentic Jamesian subtlety . . . [and] her own disturbing, searching presentation of complex human relationships. . . . Strikingly terse and original.” –The Christian Science Monitor

“A compelling story, inspired with a deep insight into human nature.” –Times Literary Supplement (London)

Customer Reviews

This book is inspiring and thought provoking.
The House in Paris is about making choices.

It starts by introducing the reader to 11 year old Henrietta who passes through the House in Paris while on her way to visit her Grandmother in Mentone. We are later introduced to Leopold. He is a nine year old boy, going to visit his mother in the House in Paris, whom he has never met. The house belongs to Madame Fisher and her daughter Naomi.

The story then goes backwards, we find out how Leopold came to be. His mother had a tryst with Max while being engaged to someone else. Leopold's Father Max was Naomi's Fiance, whom he would have married had he not killed himself. I will not give the ending away, but the threads of the story come together and everyone has a connection to the house. Bowen's descriptive style of writing is evident throughout the chapters. I can guarantee readers that they won't want to put this book down. You wish the story wouldn't end.

Between Romance and Convention
Magnificent! An altogether more mature novel than The Last September, leaner and richer at the same time. It is one of those books one wants simultaneously to speed through for the sake of the plot, and to linger over for the elegance and economy of the author's style and acuteness of her psychological insights. The Anchor edition serves it ill, I fear, by printing the revealing but otherwise excellent essay by A.S. Byatt as a preface rather than afterword, and by implying on the back jacket that the narrative is focused on the child Henrietta who, though brought to brilliant life, turns out to be a peripheral character. So one is at first confused by the shifts in viewpoint and authorial tone which are one of Bowen's strengths. And her subtlety in teasing out questions of personal identity between the competing powers of romance and convention is a delight from start to finish.

The Moment before Adulthood
This is a charming saga of young Henrietta, 11, on her trip through Paris, changing trains and sent to stay with a grandmother's friend. She finds herself in the middle of a classic family drama involving Leopold, another child also at the house who turns out to be the love-child of a yound woman who lived there during a Paris stay some years ago. As the family's pathetic attempt to cover this up unravels, Henrietta--who is at that Carol Gilligan moment of moral clarity before sexual motives unfold in her own experience--finds out for herself what motivates the adults in the House.

A surprising ending occurs, that some of you will like in this book primarily about women, and others will find a deus ex machina.