num_pages: 200
description: One of the best of the celebrated Claudine novels, this installment follows the sexual and emotional machinations of three upper-class youths in a remote farmhouse, where the protagonist of the series awaits her husband Renaud's return from a Swiss sanatorium. She distracts herself by encouraging her young friend Annie to recount salacious episodes from her love life. When Renaud's homosexual son Marcel arrives, Claudine sets about matchmaking, a fiasco she bitterly regrets. With Renaud's death, Claudine's ennui is transmuted into resigned suffering, but she gradually allows the rhythm and beauty of the natural world to reawaken her desire to live.
language: English
title: Retreat from Love
titlecomplete: Retreat from Love (Peter Owen Modern Classic)
genres: Classics, France, 20th Century, Literature, Contemporary, French Literature, Fiction
ratings_count: 303
places: France
series: Claudine
publisher: Peter Owen Publishers