Victorine

Catherine Texier

Jan 2004 · Penguin Random House Audio · Narrated by Josephine Bailey

About this audiobook

In this lush, lyrical, and marvelously evocative novel, Catherine Texier takes a mystery from her family’s past and draws from it a portrait of a remarkable woman—her great-grandmother Victorine. A young schoolteacher in a quiet province in France, Victorine had married and had two children. But when she falls desperately in love, she makes a startling choice, leaving her family for her lover and a new life in Indochina.

On a single day in 1940, as Victorine reflects on her past, we travel back with her, from the willow-lined canals of her childhood home in Vendée to sun-drenched days and languorous nights along the Mekong River at the dawn of the twentieth century. Hers is an unforgettable story of adventure and self-discovery—of a woman’s struggle between duty and independence, tradition and freedom, longing and regret.

About the author

Catherine Texier is the author of four novels, Chloé l’Atlantique, Love Me Tender, Panic Blood, and Victorine, and a memoir, Breakup. She was the coeditor of the literary magazine Between C & D, is a regular contributor to the New York Times, and has written for Newsday, Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, and Nerve. Texier lives in New York City.

Josephine Bailey, a native of London, is a seasoned performer who has won ten AudioFile Earphones Awards and a prestigious Audie Award. Publishers Weekly named her Best Female Narrator in 2002. She has narrated the audiobooks Jane Eyre, Year of Wonders, and A Great and Terrible Beauty, among many others.