Nog twee weken, dan moet dit boek af zijn. Gelukkig vlotten we aardig, maar het blijft nog wel erg krap. Duim maar voor ons dat het lukt! Boven de Amerikaanse paperbackcover die het gaat worden, onder de hardcover die me meer aanspreekt. Maar ja...
A dazzling novel set in the French Riviera based on the real-life inspirations for F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is The Night.When
Sara Wiborg and Gerald Murphy met and married, they set forth to create
a beautiful world together-one that they couldn't find within the
confines of society life in New York City. They packed up their children
and moved to the South of France, where they immediately fell in with a
group of expats, including Hemingway, Picasso, and Zelda and Scott
Fitzgerald.
On the coast of Antibes they built Villa America, a
fragrant paradise where they invented summer on the Riviera for a group
of bohemian artists and writers who became deeply entwined in each
other's affairs. There, in their oasis by the sea, the Murphys regaled
their guests and their children with flamboyant beach parties, fiery
debates over the newest ideas, and dinners beneath the stars.
It
was, for a while, a charmed life, but these were people who kept
secrets, and who beneath the sparkling veneer were heartbreakingly
human. When a tragic accident brings Owen, a young American aviator who
fought in the Great War, to the south of France, he finds himself drawn
into this flamboyant circle, and the Murphys find their world
irrevocably, unexpectedly transformed.
A handsome, private man,
Owen intrigues and unsettles the Murphys, testing the strength of their
union and encouraging a hidden side of Gerald to emerge. Suddenly a life
in which everything has been considered and exquisitely planned becomes
volatile, its safeties breached, the stakes incalculably high. Nothing
will remain as it once was.
Liza Klaussman expertly evokes the
1920s cultural scene of the so-called "Lost Generation." Ravishing and
affecting, and written with infinite tenderness,
VILLA AMERICA is at once the poignant story of a marriage and of a golden age that could not last.
