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Victorine by Catherine Texier

Victorine draws on a mystery in author Catherine Texier's family. She's fashioned Victorine after her great-grandmother, telling the story of a French woman who abandons her husband and children to follow a lover to Indochina. As a girl, Victorine was always the bold one, willing to flaunt the limits placed on her gender by French society. Torn between the domesticity of family and the yearn for adventure, Victorine just disappears one day and follows a customs officer to Indochina. Torn between the irreconcilable differences of love and freedom versus responsibility and societal limitations, Victorine must choose to stay with her lover or return to her family. Catherine Texier's novel has received mixed reviews. The Christian Science Monitor says, "If we can refer to a novel as a 'woman's book' without condescension, this is an excellent one."