Bonjour, Sophie

by Elizabeth Buchan

First published 2024

Amazon

4.2(1,218)

In 1959, eighteen-year-old Sophie is living in a constricted Sussex village with her austere foster parents and longing for a life beyond the expectations imposed on her. An affair offers temporary escape, but Sophie increasingly understands that independence will require money, courage and a decisive break with the people who have shaped her childhood. Her ambitions draw her towards Paris, the city her French mother left during the war.

Once in Paris, Sophie begins to uncover the hidden history of her family while discovering a city poised between post-war austerity and the freedoms of the coming 1960s. Buchan combines a coming-of-age story with the unresolved consequences of occupation and wartime displacement, using Sophie’s search for belonging to connect 1959 Britain and France with secrets inherited from the Second World War.