Bonjour, Sophie

'Vividly conjures the excitement of Paris' RUTH HOGAN, bestselling author of THE KEEPER OF LOST THINGS

'Beguiling' Times



Can she escape the darkness of her past in the City of Light?



It's 1959 and time for eighteen-year-old Sophie's real life to start. Her existence in the village of Poynsdean, Sussex, with her austere foster-father, the Reverend Osbert Knox, and his frustrated wife Alice, is stultifying. She finds diversion and excitement in a love affair, but soon realizes that if she wants to live life on a bigger canvas she must take matters into her own hands.



She dreams of escape to Paris, the wartime home her French mother fled before her birth. Getting there will take spirit and ingenuity, but it will be her chance to discover more about her family background, and, perhaps, to find a place where she can finally belong.



When Sophie eventually arrives in the Paris arising from the ashes of the war, it's both everything she imagined, and not at all what she expected...

'Original, page turning, wonderful. I loved it.' KATIE FFORDE

'A delightful, funny, poignant story suffused with the atmosphere of Paris on the cusp of the Sixties' RACHEL HORE



Elizabeth Buchan was a fiction editor at Random House before leaving to write full time. Her novels include the prize-winning Consider the Lily, international bestseller Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman, The New Mrs Clifton and Two Women in Rome. Buchan's short stories are broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and published in magazines. She has reviewed for the Sunday Times, The Times and the Daily Mail, and has chaired the Betty Trask and Desmond Elliot literary prizes. She was a judge for the Whitbread First Novel Award and for the 2014 Costa Novel Award. She is a patron of the Guildford Book Festival and co-founder of the Clapham Book Festival.

elizabethbuchan.com



Elizabeth Buchan is on brilliant form ... This is a coming-of-age story steeped in wisdom with an incredible sense of time and place, whether the setting is a beautiful but stifling English village or the dizzying streets of Paris. Bonjour, Sophie deserves as much love as its beguiling heroine



A glorious read! So evocative. Conjures the excitement of Paris so vividly that the reader cannot fail to be swept along on the journey. A magical coming-of-age story. I loved it!



Elizabeth Buchan's books are always original, beautifully written and page turning. Bonjour, Sophie is just as wonderful, unlike anything I've read before. I loved it.



You'll adore meeting Sophie in this delightful, funny, poignant story that's suffused with the atmosphere of Paris on the cusp of the Sixties



A rich and enthralling read... I felt as though I was being swept away by the power of a modern Thomas Hardy .... This is a coming-of-age story set in magical locations with a heroine you can't resist falling in love with. A novel that will appeal to all ages, and a sure hit.



One of my favourite authors and someone I go to for that alchemy of story and fabulous writing. A wonderful book - warm, compassionate and nuanced. I loved it.



A coming-of-age novel and so much more. Buchan weaves her narrative into a mystery that must be solved as much for the reader as for Sophie, whose story recalled, for me, the young heroines of Elizabeth Jane Howard, modern women cramped by convention, yet spirited and courageous. A wonderful, engrossing, tear-jerking and joyful read.



A poignant, charming and cheering story of a girl's growth into womanhood in 1960s Paris



Memorable and emotionally charged ... an immersive, sensory, page-turning experience. Elizabeth Buchan is skilled at exploring moral complexities big and small, from thwarted love affairs in the Sussex countryside, to dysfunctional families, to life in Paris under Nazi occupation. She takes us through the back alleys of History, among stories that are not widely known, and brings those settings vividly to life



A beautiful and poignant coming of age story that whisks you away on a magical journey to Paris



Bonjour, Sophie casts a beam of light into the darkness of post-war Britain; a cry for freedom of a whole generation of women. An incredibly emotional and evocative read



Tender, beautifully observed, gorgeous



A profoundly kind book, with a deep understanding of what it is to be human ... charms and delights with its life-affirming generosity of spirit. It will also make you laugh.