I looked forward to this book with a mixture of eager anticipation and apprehension. 'Adam', to which this is the sequel, was brilliant. It captured the magic of rural France and the exhilaration of sixteen year old Adam's discovery of what he wanted from life intellectually, sexually and emotionally. It had passion, insight and drama.
So, Anthony McDonald set himself a hard task. He has accomplished it beautifully. This is, above all, a love story. But, like all realistic love stores, it is set in a very real world of compicated emotions and relationships. Adam, now 22, has inherited a property and vineyard in the Dordogne. Once again, this book captures the magic of the French countryside in often elegaic terms. But it also captures some of the subtle, and not so subtle, hostilities facing a foreigner - and a gay foreigner at that. At the heart of the story is Adam's juggling of his professional life - part wine-maker, part professional cellist - and his emotional life. Adam loves Sylvain, the wild, uneducated man with whom he had his first, and almost tragic, passionate affair five years earlier. But he is also smitten by his neighbour, Stephane. The intricacy of relationships, the fragility of friendships, the hazards of family - all are here. And if it sounds implausible that Adam can love Sylvain while having passionate sex with Stephane then I can only say: read the book and judge for yourself. I cannot remember a book where the sexuality of the main protagonists, and its expression, was rendered with such compelling force and yet such inherent 'rightness'. A fine book and a great love story.
