Bonjour, Sophie

It’s 1959 and time for eighteen-year-old Sophie’s real life to start. Her existence in the village of Poynsdean, Sussex, with her austere foster-father, the Reverend Osbert Knox, and his frustrated wife Alice, is stultifying. She finds diversion and excitement in a love affair, but soon realizes that if she wants to live life on a bigger canvas she must take matters into her own hands. She dreams of escape to Paris, the wartime home her French mother fled before her birth. Getting there will take spirit and ingenuity, but it will be her chance to discover more about her family background, and, perhaps, to find a place where she can finally belong. When Sophie eventually arrives in the Paris arising from the ashes of the war, it’s both everything she imagined, and not at all what she expected...

Elizabeth Buchan was a fiction editor at Random House before leaving to write full time. Her novels include the prize-winning Consider the Lily, international bestseller Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman, The New Mrs. Clifton and Two Women in Rome. Buchan’s short stories are broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and published in magazines. She has reviewed for the Sunday Times, The Times and the Daily Mail, and has chaired the Betty Trask and Desmond Elliot literary prizes. She is a judge for the Women’s Prize for non fiction 2024.