Discuss the author’s choice to use real-life historical figures George Sand and Frédéric Chopin. How does this decision change your reading experience? What would differ had the characters been entirely fictional? Stevens has published two memoirs. Bleaker House (2017) is about a period living on Bleaker Island in the South Atlantic. [3] [4] Mrs Gaskell and Me (2018) draws on her own life and that of the English novelist Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-1865). [5] Her first novel Briefly, a Delicious Life was published in 2022. [6] She was shortlisted for the 2018 BBC National Short Story Award, [7] and has written for publications including The New York Times, Vogue, The Paris Review, The New York Review of Books, The Guardian and Granta. [8]

Stevens tempers this excitement with tragedy, and Briefly, A Delicious Life is also about the ways a body can betray a person, especially a woman. Fundamentally, though, it is that rare thing: a literary novel concerned with pleasure — of sex, and eating, and music, and the pleasures of a narrative, of escaping somewhere else, becoming someone else. Although a local jokes about Sand and Chopin coming to Mallorca for the weather when it is mostly miserable during their stay, the novel itself is sun-kissed, steeped in the senses, and in many ways a perfect summer beach read. If you enjoy character-driven stories, this is one for you. Yes, it’s primarily about Blanca, the ghost of a girl who died in childbirth at the monastery, but it’s also about George and Chopin and George’s two children. It’s not a novel where a whole lot happens, in truth, since it’s mostly about the characters and their various relationships and states of mind. 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." This book was captivating to put it simply, there was something so grounded and relatable unlike anything I’ve read before even though it is a story centered around a ghost. It was also the smartest use of alternating point of views I have read. It’s perceived by most as a romance book, which it is, but that doesn’t encapsulate enough that this story is about love- love and loss and grief and yearning and all that makes us human. Everyone is so amazingly complex and nuanced because no one, especially not Blanca, is a reliable narrator. You get to beautifully learn and fall in love with these characters while Blanca does as well. You get their history as well as hers, you yearn with Blanca while she yearns, and you learn to understand these deeply flawed human beings through Blanca’s eyes but also their own and each other’s. Stevens, Nell (2017). Bleaker house: chasing my novel to the end of the world. London: Picador. ISBN 9781509824410.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. 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. 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 ] 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.

Stevens, Nell (2022). Briefly, a delicious life. London. ISBN 978-1529083422. {{ cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher ( link) 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. I honestly do know what is up with people that they’ll be, like, okay, 16th century ghost, and she's gay for George Sand seems legit, wait “tasked” has been used as a verb, THAT IS A BRIDGE TOO FAR.

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I found myself floored by Nell Stevens' mastery with language, by her deep understanding of the human spirit, by the astonishing freshness of this historical novel. Briefly, A Delicious Life is a shining work of art and Nell Stevens is an original, whose touch is as deft as it is masterful." In 1838, author George Sand travels to an abandoned monastery in Mallorca to spend the winter there with her children and her lover, the musician Frédéric Chopin. Their life there, and their unconventional ways, are observed and admired by a lonely ghost called Blanca who has been haunting the island for over 300 years since she died at 14 years old. As Blanca's love for George grows, so does the antagonism of the locals towards the foreigners.

You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here. Briefly, a delicious life is told through the eyes of Blanca- a girl who died in Mallorca at a young age and now stays in that town as a ghost. For four hundred years she has been living in this confusing existence between life and death with the same families but different people. That is until, foreigners come to live in her hometown. Foreigners who dress up as men and live together with children out of marriage, that is. Blanca falls in love immediately with George, a mysterious woman who wears trousers and smokes cigars. Blanca also builds a connection with George’s lover Chopin and her two children, Maurice and Solange. Award Ceremony, Front Row | BBC Short Story Awards". www.english.cam.ac.uk . Retrieved 9 January 2023. Can I absolutely discount this novel as Bad? No, but that's precisely the problem. It's not that there's nothing redeemable about Briefly, A Delicious Life, but rather that it never does anything with its redeemable parts. It has so much potential, and yet it simply does not deliver on that potential--a fact which, for me, made it all the more disappointing in the end.Look again at the chapters titled after Chopin’s compositions: “Prelude No. 11 in B Major, Vivace,” “Prelude No. 4 in E Minor, Largo,” “Prelude No. 9 in E Major, Largo,” etc. Find and play these pieces while you discuss the novel. I went into this book almost completely blind and I’m so glad I did! it’s a beautifully romantic historical fiction, filled with music, love, and humility. the book focuses on gender roles quite a lot, which was really interesting to read about, as the book is set in 1800’s Paris and Mallorca. George, one of our central characters, rejects marriage and typical women’s fashion, adopting trousers and suits for most of the book. We’re really going to stay here?” Maurice, hovering in the doorway from the garden, looked uncertain. fourteen-year-old Blanca dies in a hilltop monastery in Mallorca. Nearly four hundred years later, when A novel of tremulous beauty, sly wit and deep understanding, Briefly, A Delicious Life is an addictive, sunlit delight."