The Weeper of the Théâtre du Lys

About this book

Paris, 1906. Sixteen-year-old Sidonie Arnaud is the best weeper in the claque of the shabby Théâtre du Lys: paid to cry on cue until the whole house cries with her. She has not shed a real tear since her mother died, and she calls that a professional advantage. Then the claque master offers her forty francs to do the opposite - to laugh at the death scene of a new play and sink it on its first night. Sidonie takes the money. To learn her cue she slips into rehearsals, where she meets the nervous schoolteacher who wrote the play, the fading star with one season left, and the sharp-tongued old prompter who sees straight through her. Thirty years later, as the theatre is torn down, Sidonie comes back to buy the prompter's box. What happened on that first night?