The Margot Affair: A Novel Kindle Edition

This book achieves that perfect (and rare!) balance between being nuanced, gorgeously-written literary fiction and plot-driven, commercially-appealing storytelling. On the one hand, I absolutely reveled in Lemoine's carefully crafted sentences, such as these: "Over time it became harder to say Maman; the soft consonants would belie the estrangement I so often felt around her. Anouk, on the other hand, ended with a sharp edge, and when I yelled her name, it was like throwing her over a cliff." (This is, among many other things, a brilliant mother/daughter story.) On the other hand, I couldn't possibly turn the pages quickly enough to discover how young Margot would navigate her way through the series of very complex, very adult situations she found herself in. This book is elegant and insightful--it's hard to believe it's Lemoine's debut. I can't wait to read more of her work!

The Margot Affair is so beautifully written that it is its own discovery. No quotation marks appear so that each character’s voice is not only heard but felt. The plot is well described elsewhere but what is so compelling is that relationships, family and other, are complicated and beyond the things we think we know and how we feel about the most important people in our lives. The mother - daughter relationship is complicated, but Margot’s attachment to her father is even more so. What we want relationships to be aren’t necessarily so and letting go of painful events and the memories they evoke has unintended consequences. I cared about Margot and her mother and hope the author will write a follow up novel as Margot moves forward . After reading The Margot Affair, I recommended it to a few friends who agree that this debut novel introduced a very talented writer.

read this twice and loved every page! full disclosure: I was sent a galley and I'm a friend of the author, however, I am truly moved and inspired by her debut work! we can expect great things from Sanaë, her writing is evocative and nuanced.

The Margot Affair is so beautifully written about complicated and sometimes mature subjects (loneliness, sex, body image, yearning, anger) that I was compelled along, knowing I would send it highly recommended to my friends. The descriptions of hot chocolate, coffee houses, windows, streets, kitchens, the French Bac, studying, the countryside, the nourishing and neglect, were so real I felt I was sharing Margot’s anguish and observations.

I couldn't stop reading - highly recommend. The author's ability to capture the nuance of female relationships in all their complicated forms was true to life yet felt like a unique, new perspective. Themes around voyeurism were woven both elegantly and disturbingly throughout the novel, holding a mirror to the reader who can't help but feel a bit voyeuristic themselves as they follow the affair and Margot's ever-more-complicated relationship with the adult world. My husband loved it too! Thanks for the ARC.

What a pleasure to read! The Margot Affair is so beautifully and gracefully written, it pulls you into another world: that of a French teenager wrestling with family secrets and the desire to find acceptance from the outside world, and within her own home and herself. I highly recommend this gorgeous debut novel!

<3 Love, love, love!

The central theme is mother-daughter conflict. Similar to Fresh Water for Flowers by Valérie Perrin (but The Margot Affair is much shorter and better edited). An American equivalent might be White Oleander by Janet Fitch. In terms of prose and "Frenchness" I would compare it to The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery. It was a lovely read and I felt like I'd been transported to the quiet, upscale arrondissements of Paris. There were sections of the novel where I was frustrated with the glacial pace, where nothing was happening, but I've come to expect this from European novels; self-indulgent and overly-descrptive in that way that American women writers can't get away with (!!!). To be fair, the Margot Affair is far less meandering than the average French novel, probably because it's published by Random House. Despite some frustrations with the immoral journalist couple Margot gets involved with, I loved her as a character and as a narrator and my interest was held by the mystery that was the "legitimate" family and the tension generated by being a secret child. It has a lovely and satisfying ending. Recommended.

Best book I have read of the yearAbsolutely wholeheartedlyLoved itWill be re reading and buying as a gift for friends

Really enjoyed the novel