Forty-six-year-old FABY GAUTHIER keeps an abandoned family photograph album in her bottom bureau drawer. Also abandoned is a composition book of vaudeville show reviews, which she wrote when she was nineteen and Slim White, America’s self-proclaimed Favorite Hoofer (given name, LOUIS KITTELL), decided to take her along when he played the Small Time before thinking better of it four months later … later and sending her back home to Vermont on the train. Two weeks before the son she had with Louis is to be married, Faby learns that Louis has been killed in a single-car accident, an apparent suicide. Her first thought is that here is one more broken promise: Louis accepted SONNY’s invitation to the wedding readily, even enthusiastically, giving every assurance that he would be there, and now he wouldn’t be coming. An even greater indignity than the broken promise is that Louis’s family did not bother to notify Faby of his death until a week after the funeral took place. She doesn’t know how she can bring herself to tell Sonny he mattered so little in his father’s life he wasn’t even asked to his funeral…
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I’ve not read a book quite like Telling Sonny, a story that marks time through the pregnancy of the protagonist. Gauffreau drew me in through this young woman’s experiences. Her questions and discomfort, as well as her fears and her dreams, became my heartfelt interest. On one hand, the story is familiar, an unfortunate sexual encounter resulting in a pregnancy. But what is different is the writing style. Simple, direct, personal. I felt as though I accompanied the writer. I felt at home. Everything seemed natural – the dialogue, the scenes, the protagonist’s struggle. There were no extremes and because of that, I marveled at Gauffreau’s skill. She has a way of drawing the reader into her or his soul. This is a book all writers should read.
Elizabeth Gauffreau takes the brief but fateful encounter between Faby, a young and naive small town girl, and a flambouyant vaudeville performer called Slim White (Louis Kittel), and creates a wonderfully engaging family drama.
We are taken on a rail trip around the eastern states of the USA, stopping off at towns and coastal resorts with their playhouses on the established circuits within the small time Vaudeville. Through the eyes of Faby, now locked into an enforced relationship with a virtual stranger, we meet the colourful performers that live out of their suitcases. Usually in dingy digs with little money left over for food or the train fare to their next engagement. A tough life and not for the fainthearted, as Faby was to discover along with the kindness of strangers. The description of life on the circuit and the individuals we discover through Faby’s reflections, was rich in detail and clearly well researched.
Two sets of values are at odds with each other which influences Faby and Louis’s relationship, small town versus the exotic and less restricted Vaudeville lifestyle. Faby is clearly out of her depth, but as she explores the towns and cities on the circuit, in the long hours that Louis is at the theatre, she begins to grow and become more self-reliant. Unfortunately, as you become immersed in the story, you cannot help but sense things are not going to end well, but you hope against hope that there might be a happy ending for this mismatched pair.
The author has created memorable characters both on the home front and on the road, with some lovely surprises as we get to know them better, including one of my favourites; Faby’s grandmother.
This novel is beautifully written with a gentle pace but is still a page turner as the reader becomes fascinated in how the story of this ill-fated relationship is going to end. Thankfully the author provides us with secret revealing final chapters, as the story of Faby, Louis and Sonny the child they share,comes to a close. Highly recommended.
Every family has secrets, old feuds and disagreements, but not many have a past like Faby’s. Telling Sonny, by Elizabeth Gauffreau, is a novel of inter-generational memories and a past that embodies every little boy’s dream—running away to join the circus. Only in this case it was a carnival and a 19-year-old girl. The reader is quickly and easily drawn into the wonders of the old carnival world as Faby travels with Louis, who has taken her under his wing and into his bed, only to discard her several months later. The past comes to light after Faby, now the mother of a son about to marry, receives a phone call from her former sister-in-law, telling her that Louis has died in a single-car accident. Louis had promised to come to Sonny’s wedding, even though he’d spent a lifetime of ignoring his firstborn son. Faby considers his apparent suicide just another of Louis’ broken promises. How can she tell Sonny that his father’s family thought so little of him, they didn’t even bother to let him no his father had died, or that the funeral had already been held? This novel shines a light on a time that most of us would never even dream of…traveling with a carnival in the twenties and seeing first hand the underbelly of that world. Plus, the wonder in the eyes of beholding exotic exhibits for the first time. What will now-conventional Faby, who works for the telephone company and has dinner every Saturday with her sister, tell her son about her old life? Will she ever forgive Louis? And will Sonny finally see Louis beyond the charming exterior he’s occasionally beheld?
Faby Gauthier lives in a small town in Vermont in the 1920’s. She is bored with small town living and fascinated by Vaudeville and the showbiz life. When she meets Slim White, a dancer in a traveling Vaudeville show, she quickly gets pregnant and caught up in a marriage that happens before she knows it. We follow Faby on the Vaudeville circuit, travel with her on uncomfortable train trips, and stay with her in cheap hotels as we learn about the less glamorous side of showbiz.
This is a beautifully written novel by Elizabeth Gaffreau that starts in small-town Vermont and takes us all over the Vaudeville circuit in the Eastern United States in the 1920’s. We learn a lot about Vaudeville life, sacrifice, and the loss of innocence. We are shown through Faby’s sister the life she could have had. We are also reminded of the priceless gift of family and the care of those who love us.
Gaffreau has an amazing ability to show us the reality of life behind the facade. For example, her descriptions of 1920’s telephone operators: “…where, inside, pale young women plugged and unplugged the telephone conversations of the village with bony fingers while they waited for someone to marry them.”
I would recommend this well-crafted novel to everyone who enjoys historical novels or anyone who wants to read a moving family story.
I thoroughly enjoyed this superbly-written novel. Family dramas are not my usual choice of genre, but the historical basis for the book, set in the US in the 1920s when vaudeville shows were at the height of their popularity, captured my interest.
The story is simple: small town girl, Faby, is swept off her feet by a handsome dancer from out of town. All too quickly she falls pregnant and her life is changed forever. Forced to marry, she accompanies him on the small time vaudeville circuit, on a series of increasingly uncomfortable train journeys and cheap hotel stop-overs as her pregnancy progresses.
As the story unfolds over the few fateful months of Faby’s pregnancy, and I found myself totally immersed in the small but uncomfortable details of this unfortunate and naïve young woman’s life. But although she weeps, she remains stoical. She observes, she questions and she reveals so much about her inner self through the way she describes her experiences on the road. The dual narrative of the physical and the psychological is gripping, yet it is told seamlessly with so light a touch.
A fascinating and clearly well-researched read, replete with beautiful prose and keen observation, I can’t recommend this novel highly enough.
It’s 1925, and 19-year-old Faby is living in Enosburg, Vermont with her close-knit French family, Maman Aurore, Papa, Mémère, and sister Josephine, when the vaudeville show comes to town. Faby is entranced by the performers and Slim White, otherwise known as Louis Kittell, in particular. They marry after Faby finds herself pregnant, embarking on rail journeys along the eastern seaboard and the Delmar circuit, from Scranton to Far Rockaway to Buffalo to Norfolk. The novel is replete with details of historical vaudeville performances, the Atlantic City boardwalk, and curiosities such as the infant incubator exhibit. As their journey and the pregnancy progresses, the guileless Faby finds her husband – and life – aren’t quite what they seem. The scenes of pregnancy and birth are visceral and moving, as Faby’s son arrives “mottled and wet on the bed between her feet, tethered to her body by a kinked cord.” Faby’s memories of her ill-fated early marriage are stirred by their son’s approaching wedding day. There is a wonderful reversal at the end, when it turns out it is Faby’s son who has something to tell her.
I finished this book in record time, trying (and failing) to slow down so the story would last longer. This novel transported me to the whimsical world of the vaudeville show circuit. During this journey of the young Faby Gauthier and her new husband Louis, author Elizabeth Gauffreau artfully unveils the personality of each, and the relationship between the two. Gauffreau takes the readers on a well-paced journey, delivering emotive language to revel towns small and large, which Faby captures with her Brownie camera; and the acts of the small time, which Faby reviews in her journal with the care and thoughtfulness of a professional. I found myself caring deeply for Faby, constantly craving more than reality provided. Equally, I started each chapter hoping Louis would give his young, naive wife the love she craved. The last chapter left me surprised and more emotional than I expected. Gauffreau’s first novel shows a deep level of story and character development, and I look forward to her next book.
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.
Gaby Gauthier, the protagonist of Telling Sonny, grows up in a small town in Vermont in the 1920’s, a few miles south of the Canadian border. Both English and French are spoken in Faby’s home and her Maman (mother) and Maman Aurore (grandmother) run their household with the same pointed efficiency as Maman Aurore’s speedy knitting needles. For Faby, recently graduated from high school and at loose ends, predictability equals boredom and it’s no surprise that she falls for a Vaudevillian dancer named Slim White when his show comes to town. What is surprising is that when Slim ( whose real name is Louis Kittel) learns that Faby is pregnant, he returns to marry her and takes her on tour with him shortly thereafter. Thus begins a beautifully written and atmospheric tale in which the dreamy-eyed, optimistic Faby continues her love affair with Vaudeville even as her disillusionment with Slim’s cavalier attitude and mysterious disappearances grows with each passing day on the road.
In some books, the journey is what captivates the reader and for me this was the case. The author deftly brings to life the song and dance acts that Faby enjoys every night, the grueling train rides and increasingly seedy hotels, and regales us with tall stories swapped by performers over mid-night snacks after the show. And when Faby finally returns home to give birth, we see a different world through her eyes than the one she left. Her coming of age is painful yet tempered by a bitter-sweet revelation at the end that brought tears to my eyes.
Filled with unique and well-defined characters. An excellent read.
Author Elizabeth Gauffreau resurrects the forgotten childhood fantasy of running away to join the circus with a twist in her novel, Telling Sonny.
Set in America’s idyllic early 20th century, a time of outwardly polite courtesies and thoughtfulness, Telling Sonny follows a young girl’s tragic fall from respectability to a life of white-knuckled survival among society’s counter-culture of traveling vaudeville entertainers.
Young Faby Gauthier, fresh out of high school wonders what’s to become of her life when the annual vaudeville show comes to her home town of Enosburg, Vermont.
Despite the drab setting in the Enosburg’s Opera House, Faby, accompanied by her sister and best friend, Josephine, is captivated by that year’s cavalcade of acts especially a song and dance number done by ‘America’s Favorite Hoofer,’ a tall, lanky fella known by his stage name, Slim White.
Gauffreau’s attention to setting details and language throughout the novel is exemplary. Faby and Slim are a study of contrasts and Gauffreau does a great job of setting them apart not only by their personalities but also by showing their differences in social customs, colloquial expressions and behaviors. Along the way, Gauffreau entertains us with enlightening anecdotal observations about early 20th century American life in small towns as well as urban centers. All through the story I felt informed and captivated with Faby’s efforts to keep up with her thoughtless, but dashing beau during a perilous time in her life.
Telling Sonny will keep you engaged from the start and you’ll finish the story satisfied, not only with the novel’s surprising conclusion, but also for having learned about a unique chapter in American social history.
A unique piece of writing. A wonderful story.