Briefly, A Delicious Life, Nell Stevens
Briefly, A Delicious Life, Nell Stevens
List: $25.99 | Sale: $18.20
Club: $12.99

Briefly, A Delicious Life

Author: Nell Stevens

Narrator: Ferdelle Capistrano

Unabridged: 9 hr 4 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 07/19/2022


Synopsis

*A Cosmopolitan Best Book of Summer * One of BuzzFeed’s Most Anticipated LGBTQ+ Books*

An “exquisite…too lovely to bear” (The New York Times Book Review) debut novel from an award-winning writer: a playful and daring tale about a teenage ghost who falls in love with the writer George Sand.

In 1473, fourteen-year-old Blanca dies in a hilltop monastery in Mallorca. Nearly four hundred years later, when George Sand, her two children, and her lover Frederic Chopin arrive in the village, Blanca is still there: a spirited, funny, righteous ghost, she’s been hanging around the monastery since her accidental death, spying on the monks and the townspeople and keeping track of her descendants.

Blanca is enchanted the moment she sees George, and the magical novel unfolds as a story of deeply felt, unrequited longing—a teenage ghost pining for a woman who can’t see her and doesn’t know she exists. As George and Chopin, who wear their unconventionality, in George’s case, literally on their sleeves, find themselves in deepening trouble with the provincial, 19th-century villagers, Blanca watches helplessly and reflects on the circumstances of her own death (which involved an ill-advised love affair with a monk-in-training).

Charming, original, and emotionally moving, this “deeply wild debut follows the unconventional love triangle” (Cosmopolitan) between George, Chopin, and Blanca—a gorgeous and surprising exploration of artistry, desire, and life after death.

About Nell Stevens

Nell Stevens is the author of Bleaker House and The Victorian & the Romantic, which won the 2019 Somerset Maugham Award. She was shortlisted for the 2018 BBC National Short Story Award and her writing has been published in The New York Times, Vogue, The Paris Review, The New York Review of Books, The GuardianGranta, and elsewhere. Nell is director of the creative writing program at the University of Warwick.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Lotte

4.25/5 I need more books narrated by horny bisexual ghosts in my life......more

Goodreads review by fatma

What a deeply underwhelming book. 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......more

Goodreads review by Katie

What a book. Bizarre, heartfelt, powerful, uplifting and incredible. I loved it. I'd give it six stars and more if I could.......more

Goodreads review by Léa

4.5 STARS! This was haunting, melancholic and so so beautiful. Following a 14 year old ghost who develops a tender obsession and fascination with novelist George Sand, this was superb. The dual timeline between Blanca observing George's mundane everyday routine paired with Blanca's past and the lead......more