The Hour of Parade
by Alan Bray
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Pub Date Nov 30 2014 | Archive Date Oct 24 2014
CreateSpace | Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA), Members' Titles
Description
The past pressed on him so that he felt he must fall to his knees. If he could just tell Valsin all that had happened—then the younger man might understand and redeem them both.
One violent act draws together three very different people in Alan Bray’s haunting debut, The Hour of Parade.
The year is 1806, and Russian cavalry officer Alexi Ruzhensky journeys to Munich to kill the man responsible for murdering his brother in a duel, French officer Louis Valsin. Already thwarted once at the Battle of Austerlitz by Valsin’s lover, Anne-Marie, Alexi has been told by his father not to fail again.
Obsessed by the main character in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s novel Julie, Alexi becomes romantically entangled with a beautiful and passionate young Bavarian woman.
He hides his true identity and befriends Valsin and Anne-Marie, only to find that he has no thirst for blood. As the three grow closer, tensions mount as Alexi and Anne-Marie desperately try to resist their growing attraction.
But as the novel comes to its explosive conclusion, Alexi will learn that revenge cannot be forgotten so easily.
A Note From the Publisher
Also available in Kindle format.
Advance Praise
The Hour of Parade recently won IndieReader’s Discovery Award for best literary fiction, as well as honorable mention at the Paris Book Fair.
In Bray’s debut novel, two soldiers from opposing armies in the Napoleonic wars forge a friendship haunted by secrets
and complicated by their mistresses...
In both style and content, Bray’s novel strongly echoes European novels of centuries past; Ruzhensky is obsessed with the title character of Rousseau’s 1761 epistolary novel, Julie, and this book provides epigraphs for every chapter, while Bray’s dynamic battle scenes owe a debt to Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Similarly, Bray’s prose, packed with simile and rich description, has a consciously old-fashioned feel to it...
The style is a wise choice since the novel almost feels as if it were written at the same time as the events it chronicles, helping to immerse readers in Bray’s story. He also succeeds in creating four fleshed-out central characters, especially the women, who could easily have become mere pawns to be moved around by the male-dominated society of the time...
Well-researched and well-crafted, like a forgotten classic found on a dusty shelf alongside Stendhal and Hugo.
-Kirkus Reviews
Available Editions
| EDITION | Paperback |
| ISBN | 9781490463223 |
| PRICE | $15.00 (USD) |
Links
Average rating from 10 members
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