THE PLEASING HOUR
by Lily King
Not only does this wonderful author share my name, but she also comes from my home state of Massachusetts. I very clearly remember being in high school when The Pleasing Hour came out and suddenly my name was all over the place. When Google became a thing, her name has always filled the search pages if I ever looked for myself. Strangely, it took me years to actually read anything by her, but once I started I have never stopped.
(If you’re interested in other Lily King books, we’ve loved Writers & Lovers (read review here) and Five Tuesdays in Winter (read review here). I highly recommend Euphoria and The English Teacher too!)
The Pleasing Hour is King’s first novel and, although it sometimes feels like a first novel in its naive-like straightforwardness, it is full of joy and pain and heart, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. Set in France, the story begins with Rosie, an American teenager who has been dropped into a family as an au pair speaking almost no French and is clearly running away from some traumatic event. Her journey to connect with the family and her new country is rocky and emotional, made more difficult by the coldness of her boss, Nicole.
But King is too clever to have this be the only story. As the book unfolds, we learn more about the family’s history, even as Rosie reveals her own. Loss is a central theme ranging from the many losses experienced as a mother or a daughter, but also the massive scale of the losses suffered during WWII in France. The Pleasing Hour is beautiful and mournful and I am so glad I finally read it 23 years later. (Lily)
