Farewell, My Only One

By Antoine Audouard

A bestseller and nominated for the prestigious Goncourt Prize in France, Farewell, My Only One brings to life one of the great romances of all time and evokes the vibrant color and tumult of the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0618152865
• ISBN13: 9780618152865
• Release Date: January 2004
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Length: 328 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.5" x 1.0" x 5.8"

Customer Reviews

An unusual study of love and faith in 12th-century France

Though the book jacket suggests that this is a romantic tale, "Farewell, My Only One," is a great deal more. As love stories go, it's more tragedy than triumph. Because we watch the two lovers, Abelard and Heloise, through William's eyes, the novel has an emotional detachment that requires a bit more effort on the reader's part. Yet William is far from uninvolved; his unrequited love for Heloise adds a bittersweet note to the story. Be prepared for a style that's highly literary, although I didn't find it particularly difficult to follow. The welcome surprise for me was the strong faith element of the story. Abelard was a brilliant thinker, teacher, and theologian, whose personal struggles between faith and flesh felt very contemporary indeed. Should you be sensitive to such things, the sexual language and images are rather graphic in a few instances. This novel is not an easy read, nor a page-turner; it offers food for thought, rather than entertainment. If you're searching for an historical romance, this is not it. If your preference is for the safe and predictable, I'd turn elsewhere. But if you fancy a literary look at 12th-century monastic life in Paris and beyond, and if you're willing to take a difficult spiritual journey with a tortured trio of seekers after Truth, then perhaps "Farewell, My Only One" might suit your fiction palate.