A Secret Kept

Simon Vance is an ideal performer for this tightly plotted and beautifully made story about a French family whose stress fractures have widened into chasms. Antoine Rey still loves his wife, who has left him for a younger man. His beautiful sister, Melanie, is turning 40 alone after a romantic breakup. On a weekend trip to a place they haven't seen since childhood, memories of their long-dead mother surface, and suddenly both are haunted by unanswered questions. Vance's French accent is elegant and assured, but more important, his sympathy for these complex and interesting characters keeps the drama from crossing into melodrama. He is particularly strong with women's voices and Antoine's teenaged children, using deft changes of register that never feel forced. A performance to savor. B.G. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

July 26, 2010
The long-delayed resolution of a French family's mystery electrifies de Rosnay's (Sarah's Key) glimpse at the crushing cost of keeping secrets. Parisian architect Antoine Rey and his sister, Mélanie, celebrate her 40th birthday on the island where they vacationed as children with their mother, until she died there in 1974. Upon returning, Mélanie is gripped by a shocking repressed memory and loses control of the car. After a brief spell of amnesia, she tells her brother what it was she remembered: their mother had been in love with a woman. As a skeptical Antoine investigates this twist in their mother's past, an upsetting chain of events unfurls: his daughter's best friend drops dead of a heart condition at only 14 years of age; his teenage son is arrested; and he learns that his father is dying of cancer. Antoine gets support in his quest from a new lover, a Harley-riding mortician who teaches him how respecting death helps one to embrace life. This perceptive portrait of a middle-aged man's delayed coming-of-age rates as a seductive, suspenseful, and trés formidable keeper.

Starred review from August 30, 2010
Together, de Rosnay and Simon Vance guide us through a sister and brother’s traumatic search for the real cause of their mother’s death some 30 years before. Vance is a reader’s reader, and he narrates de Rosnay’s novel with nuanced tones, rhythms, cadences, and subtle modulations, intonations and pauses to etch each character indelibly in the reader’s memory. He has the rare ability to do convincing women’s voices without sounding silly, and his French is very good (though his American accents are slightly overblown). A St. Martin’s hardcover (Reviews, July 26).

November 15, 2010
In this literary mystery, Frenchman Antoine Rey surprises his sister on her 40th birthday with a weekend visit to their childhood summer retreat. On their return trip, as Mélanie is about to share an unsettling memory of their mother, she drives off the road and is critically injured in a car wreck. The plot drags through Antoine's split with his wife, his son's drunken spree, the death of his daughter's best friend, and the one bright spot: his blossoming love affair with a sexy female mortician he meets at the hospital after the wreck. Hearing Simon Vance's (see Behind the Mike, "LJ"11/15/08) British-accented reading of this French story results in a disjointed experience. Even though de Rosnay's (tatianaderosnay.com) previous work, "Sarah's Key"(2007)—also available from Macmillan Audio and AudioGo—was an international best seller, this ranks as a marginal purchase. ["Different from the historical "Sarah's Key"but with as profound an effect," read the review of the St. Martin's hc, "LJ"Xpress Reviews, 9/30/10.—Ed.]—Sandy Glover, Camas P.L., WA

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