The French Girl

November 20, 2017
The discovery of the remains of a young woman named Severine, a decade after she disappeared from her Dordogne home, jump-starts a murder investigation in British author Elliott’s engrossing, if flawed, debut. It also stirs up memories for six Oxford University chums who got to know Severine during a week they spent at a Dordogne farmhouse. Hardest hit by the news is London legal recruiter Kate, who has never quite managed to get over her breakup after the aforementioned holiday with dashing Seb, a split hastened by his fascination with the elegant, enigmatic Severine. Already stressed trying to get her own headhunting firm off the ground and by the imminent return (after years in the U.S.) of both the now-married Seb and his cousin Tom—to whom she has always felt a never-pursued attraction—Kate really starts to lose it, to the point of seeing Severine’s ghost. Elliott has come up with a promising premise and intriguing, if somewhat stereotypical characters, but ultimately doesn’t seem to know quite what to do with them. Agent: Marcy Posner, Folio Literary Management.

Narrator Katherine McEwan's measured cadence perfectly matches the pace of this muted thriller. While Kate Channing was on break from college with her friends at a French cottage, a 19-year old village girl went missing. Ten years later, the discovery of her body threatens to upend Kate's life and her fledgling headhunting business. As she reconnects with her friends, she begins to unravel the past and her youthful na�vet�. McEwan's Northern English burr sets Kate apart from her tony Oxford mates, highlighting her feelings of being a perpetual outsider. In a story unusually devoid of flashbacks, McEwan's astonished tone mixes with palpable fear as Kate tries to grasp at bits of memories while being haunted by visions of the French girl, dead and alive. S.T.C. � AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine