A beautifully written & evocative story I will remember for a long time to come

• Book: Telling Sonny
• Location: Vermont
• Author: Elizabeth Gauffreau

Review Author: c130jj

Telling Sonny is the sad, wonderful tale of Faby Gauthier, a small-town Vermont girl just coming of age who is seduced by a smooth-talking vaudeville actor whose stage name is Slim White. After he leaves town Faby finds she is pregnant. She eventually tracks him down and they are married, much to the chagrin of her conservative French-Canadian family. Louis Kittel (Slim’s true name) then brings Faby south, from city to town, show to show and the whole while her hopes of this man she barely knows turning into a reliable and loving husband and father begin to fade.

As the book moves along the author Elizabeth Gauffreau does a masterful job of pulling the reader right into the 1920s—the colorful description, imagery and period-perfect word selection makes the reader wonder if this might actually have been some gifted writer’s diary from the early 20th century that was turned into a novel.

By the middle of the book I was invested emotionally in Faby’s plight, and strongly disliked the lying, cheating Slim White and in each chapter I hoped he would either come around and change for Faby’s sake (and the sake of his child), or that Faby would simply leave him. Alas, neither of those things truly came to pass, and near the end I wondered if this was just one of those unhappy stories that was well- and intentionally written to do nothing other than evoke sorrow and melancholy. I was delighted to find, however, that this wasn’t quite the case, as the final two chapters seemed to bring closure to Faby’s unfortunate story.

All in all, a beautifully written, evocative, sad, and curiously happy story I will remember for a long time to come.

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