Briefly, A Delicious Life

Description

'A gorgeous, wildly seductive novel, shimmering with intelligence, humour and joy' - Sarah Waters In 1838 Frederic 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. 'Electrifyingly beautiful, exhilaratingly clever . . . sensual, original, intelligent and brimming with love' - Imogen Hermes Gowar

Nell Stevens writes memoir and fiction. She is the author of Bleaker House and Mrs Gaskell and Me, which won the 2019 Somerset Maugham Award. She was shortlisted for the 2018 BBC National Short Story Award. Her writing has been published in The New York Times, Vogue, The Paris Review, The New York Review of Books, The Guardian, Granta, and elsewhere. Nell is an Assistant Professor in creative writing at the University of Warwick. Briefly, A Delicious Life is her debut novel.

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 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 * Dreamy and sensual and life-affirming too * Financial Times, Best Books of 2022 * Truly original . . . brilliant * The Herald * 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 * A teenage ghost falls in love with a writer who doesn't know she exists in this playful, otherworldly debut novel * Stylist * 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 A gorgeous, wildly seductive novel, shimmering with intelligence, humour and joy. I adored this book. -- Sarah Waters, author of Fingersmith and The Paying Guests 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 A heady yet poignant story about a queer ghost who falls in love * Vogue * This deeply wild debut follows the unconventional love triangle that unfolds between real-life French novelist George Sand, her lover Frederic Chopin, and the teenage ghost who died over 400 years earlier and pines after George from afar. * Cosmopolitan, Best Summer Reads 2022 * An interesting and absorbing read . . . Highly recommended * Times of Tunbridge Wells * Tantalising . . . Stevens is convincing in her portrayal of the haunting nature of desire past and present * Literary Review * 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 * 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 A luminous, beguiling exploration of creativity and love -- Alice Albinia, author of CWEN This delightfully weird story of loss, longing and love just begs to fill a rainy afternoon. * Good Housekeeping (USA) * 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) 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 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 * 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 *