The Pleasing Hour

The award-winning novel of a young American girl in France. A New York Times Notable Book.

Young, inexperienced, and fleeing a terrible personal loss, Rosie—the new au pair to the Tivot family estate in France—finds herself ill at ease when trying to connect with Nicole, the cool, distant, and beautifully polished mother of the three children she cares for. There is something about the woman that both fascinates and unnerves Rosie.

The same is true of the rest of the Tivot clan. Nicole's dissatisfied husband, Marc, and their children all seem to be caught in an unending struggle against each other for love and acceptance. Only when Rosie is sent to care for Nicole's now-elderly guardian—the storyteller of the family's secrets—does she finally discover the truth. There, Rosie will learn of a past darkened by war, duplicity, and a tragedy that still resonates in the Tivot's lives.

With this novel of family, betrayal, and the naïveté of youth, Lily King has spun a story that is powerful and splendid.

Expertly constructed, full of surprises, superbly paced and sweetly sad, King's book hardly reads like a first novel.