Harp Lesson

by Emma Tennant

Set in Revolutionary France, this atmospheric novel explores the life of `La Belle Pamela'. As a child Pamela Sims is taken from England to the French court, where she is brought up in luxury as the illegitimate daughter of Madame de Genlis. Exploring how her past shaped the extraordinary lives of Pamela and her daughter, this novel captures the atmosphere of 18th-century France and the complexity of a world where your origins are everything.

168 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Since the early 1970s, when she was in her mid-thirties, Emma Tennant has been a prolific novelist and has established herself as one of the leading British exponents of "new fiction." This does not mean that she is an imitator of either the French nouveaux romanciers or the American post-modernists, although her work reveals an indebtedness to the methods and preoccupations of some of the latter. Like them, she employs parody and rewriting, is interested in the fictiveness of fiction, appropriates some science-fiction conventions, and exploits the possibilities of generic dislocation and mutation, especially the blending of realism and fantasy. Yet, although parallels can be cited and influences suggested, her work is strongly individual, the product of an intensely personal, even idiosyncratic, attempt to create an original type of highly imaginative fiction.

Reviews

[Sean Harding · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tennant Lease #3
Average yarn here, some interest but nothing Im will remember over time.
Is this the same person who wrote the other books I read or a different person with the same name? They seem quite different - anyway, overall diverting but not memorable.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Touching and sad. And the history is interesting

[Dils AB · Rating 1 out of 5]

Tedious. Confusing. Better off reading Wikipedia and I would gleaned more about La Belle Pamela than this book.

[Wilde Sky · Rating 2 out of 5]

Drama set in 18th century France.

I couldn’t engage with the story or writing.