First, the positives, and I really only have one: the writing. The writing in Briefly, A Delicious Life is pretty good. It evokes the novel's setting--Mallorca--well, with some nice occasional descriptive flourishes during the more key scenes (particularly the ones involving Chopin's music). The writing was never something I had an issue with. No, what I had an issue with was pretty much everything else. 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." Three hundred years earlier, I’d seen Brother Tomás with Brother Mateo in that very same garden, beard crushing against beard and the clatter of rosary beads hitting the paving stones. A decade or so after that, there was the boy from the village who sold bad oranges with the boy in the kitchens who made bad preserves. Around the turn of the sixteenth century there was a complex triangulation amongst Brothers Augustin, Miguel, and Simón. And so on, over the years: countless combinations, differing ages, differing levels of urgency and tenderness, but always more or less the same, the kissing and gripping and so often the very same skittishness, the entirely justified fear of being found out, the creeping sensation that they were being watched.

I will also say that the whole "sapphic love story" aspect of this is barely in the novel, so I wouldn't get your hopes up about that.) (Oh, and the ending was so clumsy and anticlimactic; it felt like it undermined what was already a very shaky story to begin with.) Briefly, a Delicious Life' by Nell Stevens is gorgeous, just gorgeous, and effortlessly refreshing for the palette. If you've been disappointed in the fiction of 2022 so far, READ THIS (and the upcoming 'Small Angels' by Lauren Owen next month)! The piece doesn't read like a debut fiction novel. It's assured; it's resolved, forthright. The characterization fell flat. We are told things & not shown. I feel harsh saying this but I found myself caring more about George Sand & Chopin's relationship while reading an online article than when I read more than half of this book. This is Stevens’s third book but her first novel; her previous books ( Bleaker House and Mrs Gaskell & Me) were autofiction-ish but have tended to be classified as memoirs. That same playfulness with genre is here, turning what could have been a straightforward biographical novel about George Sand – in the vein of the underwhelming The Dream Lover by Elizabeth Berg – into something cheeky and magical.

We’re really going to stay here?” Maurice, hovering in the doorway from the garden, looked uncertain. A novel of tremulous beauty, sly wit and deep understanding, Briefly, A Delicious Life is an addictive, sunlit delight." This electrifyingly beautiful, exhilaratingly clever book is Nell Stevens' best to date, and 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."

Stevens appeared on BBC Radio 4's Open Book in January 2023, where she and Tom Crewe "discuss[ed] drawing creatively on marginal - and radical - LGBTQ voices from the 19th century". [10] Personal life [ edit ] 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. She mixes historical fact with the fantastical in her account of Chopin and George Sand arriving at a Mallorca monastery in 1838, only to be met by Blanca, the centuries-old ghost of a teenage girl who died cruelly young, who makes Sand confront truths about gender and sexuality that she might have preferred to ignore. The book is attuned to both contemporary and timeless concerns and grips throughout. This Much Is TrueStevens, Nell (24 October 2018). "Communing with Mrs. Gaskell". The New York Review of Books . Retrieved 9 January 2023. George and her family clash with the villagers several times throughout the novel. Did you sympathize with one group over the other? What grievances did you feel were justified? Do you think a resolution could have been reached? pining for a woman who can&#8217tsee her and doesn&#8217tknow she exists. As George and Chopin, who Though Blanca is attracted to George partly because of the way she dresses, she is still appalled when George goes into the village in a suit. How do the villagers react to the way George presents herself, as opposed to her friends in Paris?

Read George Sand’s memoir A Winter in Majorca, which recounts the details of her trip with Chopin and her two children. How does she describe Mallorca? What do you make of Stevens’s adaptation of Sand’s experiences? Elizabeth Macneal, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Doll Factory Stevens is brilliant at describing desireBlanca’s ability to affect the world around her is limited and often depends on the strength of her emotional state. The stronger her feelings, the more impactful her influence. What is the significance of her powers operating this way? What does this say about the importance of one’s emotions? winning writer: a playful and daring tale about a teenage ghost who falls in love with the writer George Sands Blanca has been dead for a few centuries when she falls in love – instantly and devotedly – with celebrated novelist George Sand. George is unlike anyone Blanca has encountered in hundreds of years of haunting: a woman dressed in men’s clothes, a ferocious writer, a passionate lover of men and women alike and an ambivalent mother. This reading group guide for BRIEFLY, A DELICIOUS LIFE includes an introduction, discussion questions, ideas for enhancing your book club. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book. Although it’s a story that doesn’t … go anywhere. Or rather, it’s a story that ends with George and Chopin continuing with their lives because, well, see above re the problem of writing about real people. The book is, however, a fascinating character piece. I can’t really attest to its accuracy but given Chopin is kind of a pill and George is completely compelling I was personally convinced. Having Blanca for a narrator manages to give the book both a sense of intimacy and sense of expansiveness: she is able to directly access people’s thoughts, along with moments from their past and the full tapestry of their future. To some degree she is a little bit of a device, in that it means the book is never tied to a single time, place or POV, but her voice is incredibly engaging and her own small piece of history heartbreakingly banal—a necessary contrast to this story of grand passion between two extraordinary artists that has passed into legend.