A best seller in France, this vibrant novel is at once the story of a very special love affair and tale of family love, that cherished feeling that binds its members together, allowing them to share their joys, but also fortifying them against the sorrows in their lives. As one character says, What's the good of a family if you insist on suffering all alone? Heartwarming, funny, moving, and reassuring, A Matter of Feeling recounts the events of a winter and spring in the life of the Moreau Family. Of modest but comfortable means, they live outside Paris in a large home redolent of baking apples and polished wood. Dr. and Mrs. Moreau have four daughters, ranging in age from twenty-one to twelve years. Defiantly modern, the sisters have radically different tastes and aptitudes, yet they are united in their love for their parents, whom they passionately challenge and revere. Claire, the oldest, is a lazy beauty; Bernadett, the nineteen-year old horsewoman, is outspoken and independent; sensitive Pauline hopes to be a writer; and Cecile, the youngest, is an imp who occasionally surprises the family with her noble deeds. The many dramas in the sisters' lives are interwoven with the bittersweet romance between the seventeen-year-old Pauline and Pierre, a forty- year old Parisian artist. Boissard describes Pauline's transition from girl to woman with immense tenderness and understanding. Still, no matter how intense their passion, Pauline and Pierre's affair is clearly doom