Vale Of Tears is a riches-to-rags story centred on Coralie, a weak woman who makes some bad decisions and who is taken advantage of by others. The book interleaves the story of one day - new year's eve, late 1950s, in which she is trawling the city looking for someone who can lend her rent money - with her descent from a life of privilege as the beautiful, fair-skinned daughter of a wealthy family.

Other reviewers have liked this book, but again, this is one that just didn't work for me. I found the style very distancing - the camera stays in medium shot, so the focus is very much on the overall trajectory. This meant that there was very little psychology, either for Coralie or those who do her down - it's much more 'tell' than 'show'. There's not much dialogue, and what there is is expository rather than insightful. I found myself comparing this book to Jean Rhys's Voyage In The Dark, which is a similar story in that it's about the inevitable sad decline of a young, naive woman with nothing but her beauty to live on - but despite the predictability of the story, you feel what Anna is feeling and in a way can understand the decisions she makes. ( )

In Short: A well told tale about the power of choice and the dire consequences that can happen when you don't learn from your mistakes. Beautifully written with a steady, almost poetic, rhythm to the words. The changes between past and present in the narrative are done in a seamless easy to follow way. Not sure if this is a book that I'd recommend but I am glad to have read it.

http://tickettoanywhere.blogspot.com/2008/02/vale-of-tears-by-paulette-poujol-or... ( )

Oriol is a Haitian novelist who wrote this book as a bit of of a challenge. "This novel is an answer to a question asked by a very dear friend who wanted to know why my hero, Pierre Tervil, in my earlier novel, Le Creusetalways maintains such an upward moral and social momentum and why everything seems to succeed in his life. I answered her in 1981, 'I could just as well painted a character who fails.'" And so we have [Vale of Tears], the tragic life of the beautiful, charming bourgeoisie Coralie Santeuil who, in her naivety falls prey to her scheming family, fails to learn from the great tragedies around her, and just has bad luck. In an alternating narrative, as the elderly, deformed Coralie sets out to beg rent and food money from acquaintances and others, we hear the story of her life through flashbacks.

Oriol is a great storyteller and we are soon sucked into this sad, humiliating and engrossing story. ( )