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Avalanche
In the blacked-out carriage of a train running through "unoccupied" France sits a young American girl, Fenton Ravel. She knows that two men share her compartment, but in the blackness she cannot see their faces. As the night wears on, the two men try to draw her into their conversation - to discover what brings her alone to this dangerous country. But Fenton is too wary to speak the words aloud to strangers - that she has come to search for her lover who has disappeared in the dark intrigues that followed the coming of the enemy.
209 pages, hardcover
Published January 1, 1944
71 people want to read
About the author
Kay Boyle
98 books42 followersKay Boyle was a writer of the Lost Generation.
Early years
The granddaughter of a publisher, Kay Boyle was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, and grew up in several cities but principally in Cincinnati, Ohio. Her father, Howard Peterson Boyle, was a lawyer, but her greatest influence came from her mother, Katherine Evans, a literary and social activist who believed that the wealthy had an obligation to help the less well off. In later years Kay Boyle championed integration and civil rights. She also advocated banning nuclear weapons, and American withdrawal from the Vietnam War.
Boyle was educated at the exclusive Shipley School in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, then studied architecture at the Ohio Mechanics Institute in Cincinnati. Interested in the arts, she studied violin at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music before settling in New York City in 1922 where she found work as a writer/editor with a small magazine.
Marriages and family life
That same year, she met and married a French exchange student, Richard Brault, and they moved to France in 1923. This resulted in her staying in Europe for the better part of the next twenty years. Separated from her husband, she formed a relationship with magazine editor Ernest Walsh, with whom she had a daughter (born after Walsh had died of tuberculosis).
In 1928 she met Laurence Vail, who was then married to Peggy Guggenheim. Boyle and Vail lived together between 1929 until 1932 when, following their divorces, they married. With Vail, she had three more children.
During her years in France, Boyle was associated with several innovative literary magazines and made friends with many of the writers and artists living in Paris around Montparnasse. Among her friends were Harry and Caresse Crosby who owned the Black Sun Press and published her first work of fiction, a collection titled Short Stories. They became such good friends that in 1928 Harry Crosby cashed in some stock dividends to help Boyle pay for an abortion. Other friends included Eugene and Maria Jolas. Kay Boyle also wrote for transition, one of the preeminent literary publications of the day. A poet as well as a novelist, her early writings often reflected her lifelong search for true love as well as her interest in the power relationships between men and women. Kay Boyle's short stories won two O. Henry Awards.
In 1936, she wrote a novel titled Death of a Man, an attack on the growing threat of Nazism, but at that time, no one in America was listening. In 1943, following her divorce from Laurence Vail, she married Baron Joseph von Franckenstein with whom she had two children. After having lived in France, Austria, England, and in Germany after World War II, Boyle returned to the United States.
McCarthyism, later life
In the States, Boyle and her husband were victims of early 1950s McCarthyism. Her husband was dismissed by Roy Cohn from his post in the Public Affairs Division of the U.S. State Department, and Boyle lost her position as foreign correspondent for The New Yorker, a post she had held for six years. She was blacklisted by most of the major magazines. During this period, her life and writing became increasingly political.
In the early 1960s, Boyle and her husband lived in Rowayton, Connecticut, where he taught at a private girls' school. He was then rehired by the State Department and posted to Iran, but died shortly thereafter in 1963.
Boyle was a writer in residence at the New York City Writer's Conference at Wagner College in 1962. In 1963, she accepted a creative writing position on the faculty of San Francisco State College, where she remained until 1979. During this period she became heavily involved in political activism. She traveled to Cambodia in 1966 as part of the "Americans Want to Know" fact-seeking mission. She participated in numerous protests, and in 1967 was arrested twice and imprisoned. In 1968, she signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge,
Early years
The granddaughter of a publisher, Kay Boyle was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, and grew up in several cities but principally in Cincinnati, Ohio. Her father, Howard Peterson Boyle, was a lawyer, but her greatest influence came from her mother, Katherine Evans, a literary and social activist who believed that the wealthy had an obligation to help the less well off. In later years Kay Boyle championed integration and civil rights. She also advocated banning nuclear weapons, and American withdrawal from the Vietnam War.
Boyle was educated at the exclusive Shipley School in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, then studied architecture at the Ohio Mechanics Institute in Cincinnati. Interested in the arts, she studied violin at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music before settling in New York City in 1922 where she found work as a writer/editor with a small magazine.
Marriages and family life
That same year, she met and married a French exchange student, Richard Brault, and they moved to France in 1923. This resulted in her staying in Europe for the better part of the next twenty years. Separated from her husband, she formed a relationship with magazine editor Ernest Walsh, with whom she had a daughter (born after Walsh had died of tuberculosis).
In 1928 she met Laurence Vail, who was then married to Peggy Guggenheim. Boyle and Vail lived together between 1929 until 1932 when, following their divorces, they married. With Vail, she had three more children.
During her years in France, Boyle was associated with several innovative literary magazines and made friends with many of the writers and artists living in Paris around Montparnasse. Among her friends were Harry and Caresse Crosby who owned the Black Sun Press and published her first work of fiction, a collection titled Short Stories. They became such good friends that in 1928 Harry Crosby cashed in some stock dividends to help Boyle pay for an abortion. Other friends included Eugene and Maria Jolas. Kay Boyle also wrote for transition, one of the preeminent literary publications of the day. A poet as well as a novelist, her early writings often reflected her lifelong search for true love as well as her interest in the power relationships between men and women. Kay Boyle's short stories won two O. Henry Awards.
In 1936, she wrote a novel titled Death of a Man, an attack on the growing threat of Nazism, but at that time, no one in America was listening. In 1943, following her divorce from Laurence Vail, she married Baron Joseph von Franckenstein with whom she had two children. After having lived in France, Austria, England, and in Germany after World War II, Boyle returned to the United States.
McCarthyism, later life
In the States, Boyle and her husband were victims of early 1950s McCarthyism. Her husband was dismissed by Roy Cohn from his post in the Public Affairs Division of the U.S. State Department, and Boyle lost her position as foreign correspondent for The New Yorker, a post she had held for six years. She was blacklisted by most of the major magazines. During this period, her life and writing became increasingly political.
In the early 1960s, Boyle and her husband lived in Rowayton, Connecticut, where he taught at a private girls' school. He was then rehired by the State Department and posted to Iran, but died shortly thereafter in 1963.
Boyle was a writer in residence at the New York City Writer's Conference at Wagner College in 1962. In 1963, she accepted a creative writing position on the faculty of San Francisco State College, where she remained until 1979. During this period she became heavily involved in political activism. She traveled to Cambodia in 1966 as part of the "Americans Want to Know" fact-seeking mission. She participated in numerous protests, and in 1967 was arrested twice and imprisoned. In 1968, she signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge,
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
October 18, 2016
What can I do now but seek to lift my head in pride instead of hanging it in shame because of the pitiful limits that I set to love? What can I do now? She thought, and she set her teeth against the taste of crying.
If I was alive in Kay Boyle’s ‘Avalanche’ I would be whatever the World War II era version of me would look like when going “Of course you like this latest musical phase because the guy you like likes it” to my mother. What do you have to do to break the wall of the lover boy’s face to live in their world too? I don’t know what to do with this weird feeling about women with this tunnel vision. This is my fourth Kay Boyle and,of course, the man is better than the dream king, Santa Claus, and freshly baked bread. All the other times there were days between sleeping your life away, a movie montage of calendar days ticking by and an X for treasure. She's better than this but I have felt this sadness before. Even if I kept thinking about being the hungry when you have food that you just don’t want to eat I don’t live here. I get longing but I don’t get nineteen-year-old Fenton’s girl worship of mountaineer Bastineau that just won’t die. He has flippin’ two staged deaths by the villagers with motive. They have a mountain and they still want another pulpit to preach from. Everyone tells Fenton about their cause. First, in sly you wish you were starvation post-cards to guilt her that her parents dragged her butt to America. Still, she comes back during a war for him. Prove yourself, the ugly voices say. (What was with the constant mentions of an old feud over who paid what for a goat? These Truex nags don't get to try to be cute.) They talk about wine and cheese an awful lot. Bastineau, when he finally appears, has a worshipful Austrian refugee to weight his words by hanging on them. Saving people is all well, only reading lists of their good deeds won’t get me anywhere else. Sure, Bastineau has a big speech about the same declaration of love fifteen-year-old Fenton made that the next four years Fenton returns to constantly in red face and clenched fists. He’s dined off of those for weeks and ages, now. I didn’t want to be there for the of course she’s joining his dangerous hero cause since the guy she likes it is doing it. Does the man in this ‘the world is only me’ side know something I don’t? Maybe they don’t get a funny feeling like they don’t exist to hear it. Maybe they think this chick actually likes that band they like. She’s not sure of his love. He carves it in wood, whittles it in ice. I throw up on merry-go-rounds and Ferris wheels and round and round she goes does he love her or love her not. It is lucky it is avalanche season or they wouldn’t have a bloom left. Is he dead or is he not. I don’t care about their romance. He always called her his child and tells her and others that he “brought her up”. That’s a little bit creepy. I tried to do that thing when Butt-Head from Beavis & Butt-head tries to will something previously disappointing to become spontaneously different and awesome as hoped. I wish you could do that with books, just get in there somehow and shake their shoulders and be real. Fenton, what the heck, do you care if you never see your parents again? This is the worst Kay Boyle book. Crazy-hunter and Plagued by the Nightingale were more like love that wants to forget everyone else. Depressing but at least something else was there. They were doing it on purpose and I had a suspicion why. Willful return to the selfishness of babyhood, somehow. If I could make Swiss de Vaudois not a Gestapo goon. The Truex people did wish him dead. If only the way they watched him wasn't sacrificed on the altar of the lesser of two evils. If Fenton didn't just marry into them. They were straight up creepy. She grew up there! Yet they would have easily killed her to keep their secret. It bugs me that she grew up in those same mountains and still her only identity to herself or to them is as Bastineau's girl. What the heck does it take to be real people to people in this thing?
If I was alive in Kay Boyle’s ‘Avalanche’ I would be whatever the World War II era version of me would look like when going “Of course you like this latest musical phase because the guy you like likes it” to my mother. What do you have to do to break the wall of the lover boy’s face to live in their world too? I don’t know what to do with this weird feeling about women with this tunnel vision. This is my fourth Kay Boyle and,of course, the man is better than the dream king, Santa Claus, and freshly baked bread. All the other times there were days between sleeping your life away, a movie montage of calendar days ticking by and an X for treasure. She's better than this but I have felt this sadness before. Even if I kept thinking about being the hungry when you have food that you just don’t want to eat I don’t live here. I get longing but I don’t get nineteen-year-old Fenton’s girl worship of mountaineer Bastineau that just won’t die. He has flippin’ two staged deaths by the villagers with motive. They have a mountain and they still want another pulpit to preach from. Everyone tells Fenton about their cause. First, in sly you wish you were starvation post-cards to guilt her that her parents dragged her butt to America. Still, she comes back during a war for him. Prove yourself, the ugly voices say. (What was with the constant mentions of an old feud over who paid what for a goat? These Truex nags don't get to try to be cute.) They talk about wine and cheese an awful lot. Bastineau, when he finally appears, has a worshipful Austrian refugee to weight his words by hanging on them. Saving people is all well, only reading lists of their good deeds won’t get me anywhere else. Sure, Bastineau has a big speech about the same declaration of love fifteen-year-old Fenton made that the next four years Fenton returns to constantly in red face and clenched fists. He’s dined off of those for weeks and ages, now. I didn’t want to be there for the of course she’s joining his dangerous hero cause since the guy she likes it is doing it. Does the man in this ‘the world is only me’ side know something I don’t? Maybe they don’t get a funny feeling like they don’t exist to hear it. Maybe they think this chick actually likes that band they like. She’s not sure of his love. He carves it in wood, whittles it in ice. I throw up on merry-go-rounds and Ferris wheels and round and round she goes does he love her or love her not. It is lucky it is avalanche season or they wouldn’t have a bloom left. Is he dead or is he not. I don’t care about their romance. He always called her his child and tells her and others that he “brought her up”. That’s a little bit creepy. I tried to do that thing when Butt-Head from Beavis & Butt-head tries to will something previously disappointing to become spontaneously different and awesome as hoped. I wish you could do that with books, just get in there somehow and shake their shoulders and be real. Fenton, what the heck, do you care if you never see your parents again? This is the worst Kay Boyle book. Crazy-hunter and Plagued by the Nightingale were more like love that wants to forget everyone else. Depressing but at least something else was there. They were doing it on purpose and I had a suspicion why. Willful return to the selfishness of babyhood, somehow. If I could make Swiss de Vaudois not a Gestapo goon. The Truex people did wish him dead. If only the way they watched him wasn't sacrificed on the altar of the lesser of two evils. If Fenton didn't just marry into them. They were straight up creepy. She grew up there! Yet they would have easily killed her to keep their secret. It bugs me that she grew up in those same mountains and still her only identity to herself or to them is as Bastineau's girl. What the heck does it take to be real people to people in this thing?
December 2, 2015
A short piece I wrote for The Scofield's second issue's "Ports of Call" section, an issue themed around Kay Boyle's work: http://bit.ly/TheScofield1-2
Written during the latter part of the Second World War and published in 1944, Boyle’s Avalanche represents a critical shift in her writing; while still demonstrating a stylistic debt to modernist figures such as Henry James, Ezra Pound, and Gertrude Stein, Avalanche sees Boyle pressing forward into more overtly political work—a thematic that will color her work to come, especially with the advent of the Vietnam War. In many ways, while she is one of American expatriate literature’s most unique prose stylists, one that is sadly forgotten and whose reputation is horrifically buried in literary culture today, she is also the twentieth century’s most vocal chronicler of war, covering and spanning every war’s repercussions for America, the world at large, and those individuals poised precariously between borders and nations.
In Avalanche, the American Fenton Ravel travels to war-torn France in order to find her lost lover, Bastineau, who has put his knowledge of mountaineering and the frontiers to good use in assisting French nationals to escape from Germany across the Alps. In what is perhaps Boyle’s most brilliant and cinematic opening chapter—demonstrating a debt to James as well as to Alfred Hitchcock—Fenton travels in a blacked-out train with two men whose faces she can see only by the light of a paltry match used to light proffered cigarettes. On the journey, Fenton tries to decipher their nationalities based on their accents, their opinions about world politics, their manners, and the way they interact with each other—launching one of the first extended interior monologue scenes in all of Boyle’s novels.
However, it becomes clear that in a world ruptured by war and in which no one feels wholly at home, national identity is a myth, at best.And this is the central predicament with which Fenton deals in Avalanche, on her quest to rejoin her lover Bastineau. Along the way, not only are patriotism and national allegiance called into question, but so are the ineffable yet persistent callings of the heart: as in all of Boyle’s work, Avalanche’s themes of love and espionage examine the dialectical relationship between these states, just as her characters play out a sociopolitical chamber drama in which the heart knows nothing about borders, and love knows no bounds of national or political allegiance.
Written during the latter part of the Second World War and published in 1944, Boyle’s Avalanche represents a critical shift in her writing; while still demonstrating a stylistic debt to modernist figures such as Henry James, Ezra Pound, and Gertrude Stein, Avalanche sees Boyle pressing forward into more overtly political work—a thematic that will color her work to come, especially with the advent of the Vietnam War. In many ways, while she is one of American expatriate literature’s most unique prose stylists, one that is sadly forgotten and whose reputation is horrifically buried in literary culture today, she is also the twentieth century’s most vocal chronicler of war, covering and spanning every war’s repercussions for America, the world at large, and those individuals poised precariously between borders and nations.
In Avalanche, the American Fenton Ravel travels to war-torn France in order to find her lost lover, Bastineau, who has put his knowledge of mountaineering and the frontiers to good use in assisting French nationals to escape from Germany across the Alps. In what is perhaps Boyle’s most brilliant and cinematic opening chapter—demonstrating a debt to James as well as to Alfred Hitchcock—Fenton travels in a blacked-out train with two men whose faces she can see only by the light of a paltry match used to light proffered cigarettes. On the journey, Fenton tries to decipher their nationalities based on their accents, their opinions about world politics, their manners, and the way they interact with each other—launching one of the first extended interior monologue scenes in all of Boyle’s novels.
However, it becomes clear that in a world ruptured by war and in which no one feels wholly at home, national identity is a myth, at best.And this is the central predicament with which Fenton deals in Avalanche, on her quest to rejoin her lover Bastineau. Along the way, not only are patriotism and national allegiance called into question, but so are the ineffable yet persistent callings of the heart: as in all of Boyle’s work, Avalanche’s themes of love and espionage examine the dialectical relationship between these states, just as her characters play out a sociopolitical chamber drama in which the heart knows nothing about borders, and love knows no bounds of national or political allegiance.
April 28, 2019
I think I read somewhere that this was Kay Boyle’s only “best seller”. I can see why. The story is exciting, especially in its long last chapter (roughly a quarter of the book), and the writing is more easily approachable than in her earlier works. The writing is less experimental in general and any interior monologue is clearly distinguishable by being set in italics. For once, I didn’t have to parse a single sentence. The thing is, I missed the experimentation and I’m sure Death of a Man: A Novel spoiled me. Worth a read, but I can’t fairly rave about it.
July 16, 2009
My mother owned this book. I read it when I was a teenager and had nothing else to read, so started looking through Mom's books for something. She told me that her mother had owned the book previously and would not let her read it until she got married because she was "too young." We had a good laugh over that--there's nothing in this book to rate such a reaction. Grandma must have purchased this book when it first came out though, since my mom was born just before the war started. I've always loved this book. I just re-read it for the first time in over 30 years. Its a lot milder and slower than I remembered but still a good story. Could use a little more action or something to keep the story moving though.
September 6, 2018
I loved this book with every part of me. If you love The Moon is Down, or courage, or love stories, or the mountains, you should read it.
December 14, 2023
From the JetBlackDragonfly book blog at www.edenthompson.ca/blog
Avalanche by Kay Boyle is the kind of book I love; a wartime adventure set in the French alps, filled with intrigue and romance. Not knowing anything about it, I was swept back to 1944 with Fenton and Jacqueminot.
Fenton Ravel returns to her home at the foot of Montt Blanc, on leave from war relief in Lyon. Her fellow passengers in the blacked-out train compartment are French mountain climber Jacqueminot, and a Swiss, Monsieur de Vaudois. She is determined to find the truth about her childhood love Bastineau, who with all mountain guides was conscripted by the invading Germans to maintain border lookouts. A recent climbing accident caused the death of a Swiss man whom de Vaudois is looking for - Bastineau was never found. The town rebuffs her, convincing her Bastineau is dead. Should she leave this place - or is this strategy to protect her? This is occupied France and all supplies are taken by the Germans, ration cards are scarce, yet there is an unspoken underground hidden amongst the town, and a network to help those attempting escape from Italy over the Alps. Climbing above the glaciers is dangerous for the unprepared, but Fenton is determined to explore the great wild sweeps of ice and snow to find her answers. No one is who they seem, including Bastineau and his role in the fight against the Boche.
I really enjoyed the tension and mystery Boyle created. There was the right amount of romantic yearning as Fenton pines for Bastineau, mixed with the crippling weight of the German invasion. Personally, I would have taken handsome Jacqueminot, who in his knee length climbing trousers and lumberjack shirt was subtly strong and protective of Fenton. This is a more romantic spy novel than those of Helen MacInnes, and although Kay Boyle stated she wrote what the public wanted, this is a solid read of the French resistance. Thoroughly enjoyable with several gasp out loud surprises along the way.
Avalanche by Kay Boyle is the kind of book I love; a wartime adventure set in the French alps, filled with intrigue and romance. Not knowing anything about it, I was swept back to 1944 with Fenton and Jacqueminot.
Fenton Ravel returns to her home at the foot of Montt Blanc, on leave from war relief in Lyon. Her fellow passengers in the blacked-out train compartment are French mountain climber Jacqueminot, and a Swiss, Monsieur de Vaudois. She is determined to find the truth about her childhood love Bastineau, who with all mountain guides was conscripted by the invading Germans to maintain border lookouts. A recent climbing accident caused the death of a Swiss man whom de Vaudois is looking for - Bastineau was never found. The town rebuffs her, convincing her Bastineau is dead. Should she leave this place - or is this strategy to protect her? This is occupied France and all supplies are taken by the Germans, ration cards are scarce, yet there is an unspoken underground hidden amongst the town, and a network to help those attempting escape from Italy over the Alps. Climbing above the glaciers is dangerous for the unprepared, but Fenton is determined to explore the great wild sweeps of ice and snow to find her answers. No one is who they seem, including Bastineau and his role in the fight against the Boche.
I really enjoyed the tension and mystery Boyle created. There was the right amount of romantic yearning as Fenton pines for Bastineau, mixed with the crippling weight of the German invasion. Personally, I would have taken handsome Jacqueminot, who in his knee length climbing trousers and lumberjack shirt was subtly strong and protective of Fenton. This is a more romantic spy novel than those of Helen MacInnes, and although Kay Boyle stated she wrote what the public wanted, this is a solid read of the French resistance. Thoroughly enjoyable with several gasp out loud surprises along the way.
November 27, 2016
I missed studying writing with Kay Boyle by only two years--she left San Francisco State's creative writing program just two years before I arrived. I found this novel in a thrift store over the summer--or maybe last summer--and thought I'd see what I missed. I also knew her name from a course I took back at SF State on expat literature: Paris in the 1920's. Sadly, I feel like Ms. Boyle failed to grasp the best elements of modernist writing: the first person, reserve, the tip of the iceberg, saying less to mean more. Gosh her political stance and enthusiasm are great, but the melodramatic prose just grated. Maudlin expressions of worshipful teenage love are a bit behind this 54 year old. And the brave French people under Nazism. Oh, poor things. Like they never colonized North Africa, fought a bloody, underhanded war of terror in Algeria, invaded Italy, Flanders, Germany, The Kingdom of Naples, and Russia under Napoleon, taught the native Americans how to cut hair from the heads of the British settlers in the new world, ran Devil's Island for years, disgraced a certain Jewish soldier... Bitch, please. I made it to the end of the first chapter--a whopping 50 pp or so. That's more than enough sentimental propaganda.
June 27, 2022
I've mostly been reading books published before the mid-20th century and for the most part of liked them very much. Avalanche I absolutely loved! Not only was the topic interesting (freedom fighters in Italy during the "armistice" of WWII - not politics, but peoples' experiences as they struggled for freedom from oppression). But what was BEST was the writing! Boyle took you directly into their lives, down to their very movements, hand gestures, and facial expressions. I've read sooo many books and have never read such real descriptive moments that placed you in the very room, the very lives of the characters. It was AMAZING!! I must find more of her books to read!!!
November 4, 2007
I unexpectedly came across this book, set during WWII in a remote French village near the Italian Border. The heroine - half French, half American - grew up in the village and is now back, searching for the man she grew up with, now mysteriously missing, clearly involved in Resistance work. Can she find him before the Nazis do?
There is something reminiscent of Helen MacInnes in this story, although it is slighter and lacks her gentle humor.
There is something reminiscent of Helen MacInnes in this story, although it is slighter and lacks her gentle humor.
February 14, 2018
Avalanche (1944) by Kay Boyle is an espionage story with romantic overtones set in France during the German occupation. It follows Fenton Ravel, a French-American young woman who has returned to France from America. She is in search of answers about the disappearance of Bastineau, a man she grew up with and whom she grew to love. It is said that Bastineau died in an avalanche, along with two men he was guiding in the French Alps, but Fenton refuses to believe that he is dead. As she makes her way to the mountains where she grew up, she doesn't realize that there is someone else on the darkened train who also searches for Bastineau and the secrets his disappearance hides.
The locals are suspicious of her, in part because she is viewed as having abandoned France (for America) when war was rumbling on the horizon. Now that she's back, she is seen in the company men suspected of being spies and the villagers are fearful that the secret work of the resistance will be revealed--either deliberately or inadvertently by her return.Will she be able to help the man she loves...or will she unknowingly lead the enemy to him?
********Spoilers Ahead*************
This is an average romance and an average spy story. Fenton is, unfortunately, a fairly stupid heroine. It takes her an inordinately long time to spot the bad guy of the piece (despite Boyle using near-neon signposts pointing to him) and still manages to lead him to the truth about Bastineau and the resistance movement that he's still working with (yes, he's alive). Fortunately for her, our hero arrives in the nick of time to save her from the German spy. And they get married (monsieur le curé just happens to pop in at the right moment) and they go happily off into the sunset to fight for the resistance together.
The best parts of this one include the opening scenes when Fenton is on the dark train with two other travelers--they sit in the dark compartment because of the black out. They are all curious about one another, but endeavor to hold a casual conversation that will not betray their curiosity. It's quite well done. Boyle also does well with her descriptions of the gray and white mountains, invoking brooding imagery that gives readers a good sense of the landscape. I think perhaps Boyle would have done better as a straight fiction writer. She doesn't quite have the flair necessary for a suspenseful spy thriller. ★★ and a half. [rounded to three here]
First posted on my blog My Reader's Block. Please request permission before reposting. Thanks.
The locals are suspicious of her, in part because she is viewed as having abandoned France (for America) when war was rumbling on the horizon. Now that she's back, she is seen in the company men suspected of being spies and the villagers are fearful that the secret work of the resistance will be revealed--either deliberately or inadvertently by her return.Will she be able to help the man she loves...or will she unknowingly lead the enemy to him?
********Spoilers Ahead*************
This is an average romance and an average spy story. Fenton is, unfortunately, a fairly stupid heroine. It takes her an inordinately long time to spot the bad guy of the piece (despite Boyle using near-neon signposts pointing to him) and still manages to lead him to the truth about Bastineau and the resistance movement that he's still working with (yes, he's alive). Fortunately for her, our hero arrives in the nick of time to save her from the German spy. And they get married (monsieur le curé just happens to pop in at the right moment) and they go happily off into the sunset to fight for the resistance together.
The best parts of this one include the opening scenes when Fenton is on the dark train with two other travelers--they sit in the dark compartment because of the black out. They are all curious about one another, but endeavor to hold a casual conversation that will not betray their curiosity. It's quite well done. Boyle also does well with her descriptions of the gray and white mountains, invoking brooding imagery that gives readers a good sense of the landscape. I think perhaps Boyle would have done better as a straight fiction writer. She doesn't quite have the flair necessary for a suspenseful spy thriller. ★★ and a half. [rounded to three here]
First posted on my blog My Reader's Block. Please request permission before reposting. Thanks.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 7, 2024
Avalanche reads like a movie. Set in a snowy, mountainous French town, a young woman returns home for the first time in a few years in search of a childhood love, to find the landscape unfamiliar due to the effects of German occupation. It’s a historical mystery and drama with multiple twists, and a satisfying, yet haunting ending. I would consider this a sophisticated page turner, and I recommend it especially to those who enjoy World War II novels and stories of the French resistance.
One thing I will note on a personal level: as someone from a mixed ethnic background, I resonated with Fenton’s struggle to demonstrate her belonging due to her half American identity and the fact that she’d been away from France during a pivotal change. Further enhanced by the townspeople’s wariness and suspicion of outsiders due to the war, it raises the stakes of her reclaiming her roots. I found this to be an unexpected, empathy-inducing quality to this book.
One thing I will note on a personal level: as someone from a mixed ethnic background, I resonated with Fenton’s struggle to demonstrate her belonging due to her half American identity and the fact that she’d been away from France during a pivotal change. Further enhanced by the townspeople’s wariness and suspicion of outsiders due to the war, it raises the stakes of her reclaiming her roots. I found this to be an unexpected, empathy-inducing quality to this book.
March 31, 2014
I was really into this book - so into it, that during a half-marathon on Saturday, I couldn't wait to finish so I could get back to reading! A young half-American, half-French woman returns to France mid-WWII. Her family had sent her away to the U.S. to be safe, but she came back to help the war efforts in France because she sees that as her home. She gets a lot of mixed stories as she searches for Bastineau - she refuses to believe he is dead. As the layers untumble themselves, the story unfolds, and you get sucked in.
January 7, 2011
Boyle styled herself one of the Moderns of the American expatriate community in 1920s Paris, rubbing elbows (and obviously hoping to share fame) with Fitzgerald and Hemingway. But a few pages into her novel is enough to show why she fell by the wayside. Overwritten and overwrought---I couldn't get past chapter three.
April 15, 2015
Fun. Like reading an early Hitchcock movie!
May 5, 2018
An excellent novel about the French resistance in the Alps during World War II.
Want to read
October 6, 2018Synopsis: Fenton Ravel is on a train in France in WW2 searching for her lost lover. It's very dangerous.
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