Pillion Riders

Taylor's subtle and sensuous novel is set in Paris and offers vivid glimpses of French working-class life. Opal, the heroine, is married to a wealthy and elderly business associate of her father's, and is taken to Paris by her husband. There she falls passionately in love with a man of her own age a young French composer of both scant means and morals. Opal's husband is kind and caring, but Jean-Claude, her lover, is melancholic, secretive, and often unkind. Through her reflective heroine, Taylor explores the conflict in the predictably painful demands of passion vs. morality, head vs. heart.