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Briefly, A Delicious Life
- Author
- Nell Stevens
- Narrator
- Ell Potter
- Publisher
- Pan Macmillan
- Publish Date
- 23 June 2022
- Run Time
- 9 hours 49 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
- Genre
- Historical fiction, Historical romance, Narrative theme: love / relationships, Narrative theme: interior life / psychological fiction, Humorous fiction, Biographical fiction / autobiographical fiction
- Rating
- 4.0 (1 review)
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What to expect
'A gorgeous, wildly seductive novel, shimmering with intelligence, humour and joy' - Sarah Waters
Longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize
In 1838 Frédéric Chopin, George Sand and her children travel to a monastery in Mallorca. They are there to create and to convalesce, to live a simple life after the wildness of their Paris days.
Witness to this tumultuous arrival is Blanca, the ghost of a teenage girl who has been at the monastery for over three hundred years. Blanca’s was a life cut short and she is outraged. Having lived in a world full, according to her mother, of ‘beautiful men’, she has found that in death it is the women she falls for, their beauty she cannot turn away from, and it is the women and girls who, over her centuries in the village and at the monastery, she has sought to protect from the attentions of men with what little power she has. And then George Sand arrives, this beautiful woman in a man’s clothes, and Blanca is in love.
But the rest of the village is suspicious of the newcomers, and as winter sets in, as George tries to keep her family and herself from falling apart, as Chopin writes prelude after prelude in despair on his tuneless piano, their stay looks likely to end in disaster . . .
Heady with the delicious scent of the Mediterranean, richly witty, and utterly compulsive, Briefly, A Delicious Life is a story about convention and breaking convention, about love – yearning, secret, forbidden, unrequited – and about men and women and the cruelty they mete out to one another.
'Exquisite' - New York Times
'Deeply enjoyable' - Telegraph
'Electrifyingly beautiful, exhilaratingly clever . . . sensual, original, intelligent and brimming with love' - Imogen Hermes Gowar
Critics Review
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A luscious, multi-sensory bewitchment of a book - Stevens’ writing rings with wit and surprise
Kiran Millwood Hargrave, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Mercies
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I found myself floored by the astonishing freshness of this historical novel . . . A shining work of art, but so deftfully, gracefully done, that it was a struggle to stop myself from turning the pages. Nell Stevens is an original, whose touch is as deft as it is masterful
Elizabeth Macneal, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Doll Factory
-
Stevens is brilliant at describing desire
Guardian
-
Deeply enjoyable, guileful
Telegraph
See more reviews See fewer reviews
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Dreamy and sensual and life-affirming too
Financial Times, Best Books of 2022
-
Truly original . . . brilliant
The Herald
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Nell Stevens’s hugely accomplished debut novel evokes a sense both of place and time with a confidence that augurs well for her future career . . . The book is attuned to both contemporary and timeless concerns and grips throughout
Guardian
-
Exquisite . . . Blanca is the story’s heart. She’s a charming, witty character whose vulnerability and occasional gloom make her an irresistible narrator . . . I confess: I cried
New York Times
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A teenage ghost falls in love with a writer who doesn’t know she exists in this playful, otherworldly debut novel
Stylist
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A voluptuous delight . . . Like the best historical fiction it is playfully disingenuous . . . the whole book is radiant with life
Financial Times
-
Electrifyingly beautiful, exhilaratingly clever . . . categorically the most gorgeous first novel I've read in years. It's rare that I come across historical fiction so sensual, so original, so intelligent, and so brimming with love
Imogen Hermes Gowar, author of The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock
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A gorgeous, wildly seductive novel, shimmering with intelligence, humour and joy. I adored this book.
Sarah Waters, author of Fingersmith and The Paying Guests
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A haunting, dazzling tale of all the good stuff: love, sex, music, literature, death, and what happens after. Nell Stevens is a beautiful writer.
Melissa Broder, author of The Pisces and Milk Fed
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A heady yet poignant story about a queer ghost who falls in love
Vogue
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This deeply wild debut follows the unconventional love triangle that unfolds between real-life French novelist George Sand, her lover Frédéric Chopin, and the teenage ghost who died over 400 years earlier and pines after George from afar.
Cosmopolitan, Best Summer Reads 2022
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An interesting and absorbing read . . . Highly recommended
Times of Tunbridge Wells
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Tantalising . . . Stevens is convincing in her portrayal of the haunting nature of desire past and present
Literary Review
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There are biographies, and there are novels fictionalising real characters, imagining what might happen 'if'. This one is truly original, as it is a brilliant mix of both . . . Blanca may be a ghost, but her feelings are very real, as are the sights, sounds, smells, and dramas which envelop Sand, Chopin and their family, as they struggle for acceptance, creative freedom and, at times, survival
i
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A novel of tremulous beauty, sly wit and deep understanding, Briefly, A Delicious Life is an addictive, sunlit delight
Stuart Evers, author of The Blind Light
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A luminous, beguiling exploration of creativity and love
Alice Albinia, author of CWEN
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This delightfully weird story of loss, longing and love just begs to fill a rainy afternoon.
Good Housekeeping (USA)
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Stevens’ prose is by turns languid and visceral . . . An entrancing and singular exploration of a fascinating historical footnote and a queer life after death.
Kirkus (starred review)
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We know we are curious about the dead but imagine a life lived so vibrantly as to make the dead curious about us. Nell Stevens brings a reader into the strange and brilliant artistic exile of George Sand, writing this tender story with tremendous heart and daring. Here, reader, are the low-lying truths of love, art and time
Samantha Hunt, author of The Dark Dark
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Stevens' writing is beautiful and evocative of the Majorcan landscape as she slowly develops the arc of Sand and Chopin's affair and elucidates Blanca's life spent in tantalizing anticipation . . . this is a winner with appeal beyond historical fiction readers
Booklist
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A haunting (in all senses of the word) and evocative magical realist account of creativity and gender, sexuality and inspiration, a ghost story both gothic and beautiful
The Millions
User Reviews
Book 4.0
Narration 5.0
- No written reviews yet.
Details
- Author
- Nell Stevens
- Narrator
- Ell Potter
- Duration
- 9 hours 49 minutes
- Release Date
- 23 June 2022
- ISBN
- 9781529083460
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Pan Macmillan
- Genre
- Historical fiction, Historical romance, Narrative theme: love / relationships, Narrative theme: interior life / psychological fiction, Humorous fiction, Biographical fiction / autobiographical fiction
- Rating
- 4.0(1 review)
- Narration
- 5.0(1 review)
Synopsis
'A gorgeous, wildly seductive novel, shimmering with intelligence, humour and joy' - Sarah WatersLonglisted for the Dylan Thomas PrizeIn 1838 Frédéric Chopin, George Sand and her children travel to a monastery in Mallorca. They are there to create and to convalesce, to live a simple life after the wildness of their Paris days.Witness to this tumultuous arrival is Blanca, the ghost of a teenage girl who has been at the monastery for over three hundred years. Blanca’s was a life cut short and she is outraged. Having lived in a world full, according to her mother, of ‘beautiful men’, she has found that in death it is the women she falls for, their beauty she cannot turn away from, and it is the women and girls who, over her centuries in the village and at the monastery, she has sought to protect from the attentions of men with what little power she has. And then George Sand arrives, this beautiful woman in a man’s clothes, and Blanca is in love.But the rest of the village is suspicious of the newcomers, and as winter sets in, as George tries to keep her family and herself from falling apart, as Chopin writes prelude after prelude in despair on his tuneless piano, their stay looks likely to end in disaster . . .Heady with the delicious scent of the Mediterranean, richly witty, and utterly compulsive, Briefly, A Delicious Life is a story about convention and breaking convention, about love – yearning, secret, forbidden, unrequited – and about men and women and the cruelty they mete out to one another.'Exquisite' - New York Times'Deeply enjoyable' - Telegraph'Electrifyingly beautiful, exhilaratingly clever . . . sensual, original, intelligent and brimming with love' - Imogen Hermes Gowar
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