The Valentine House

PLEASE NOTE: This title has been listed for readers in Australia and New Zealand. If you are in the UK or other territories, please search for the UK edition, if listed.

From the Orange Prize shortlisted author of GRACE WILLIAMS SAYS IT LOUD, an entrancing novel about a young French girl and the English family who invade her Alpine village and her life.

In June 1914, Sir Anthony Valentine, a keen mountaineer, arrives with his family to spend the summer in their chalet, high in the French Alps. There, for the first time, fourteen-year-old foundling Mathilde starts work as one of the 'uglies' - village girls employed as servants and picked, it is believed, to ensure they don't catch Sir Anthony's roving eye. 

For Mathilde it is the start of a life-long entanglement with les anglais - strange, exciting people, far removed from the hard grind of farming. Except she soon finds the Valentines are less carefree than they appear, with a curiously absent daughter no one talks about. It will be decades - disrupted by war, accidents and a cruel betrayal  - before Mathilde discovers the key to the mystery.  And in 1976, the year Sir Anthony's great-great grandson comes to visit, she must decide whether to use it. 

Vividly evoking the dramatic landscape that so enthrals the Valentines, this deeply involving, intriguing novel tells the story of an English family through the generations and a memorable French woman, whose lives seem worlds apart yet which become inextricably connected.