Briefly, A Delicious Life

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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. In my eyes, the perfect historical fiction must have a sense of time & place. This book did not have that 😅It almost read contemporary. I found myself often debating about the time period in which this book was set. I will also note that—unlike some mainstream reviewers—I appreciated the modernity of Blanca’s narration. The book is actually beautifully written: there’s a precision to the language that allows it to convey sensuality, bitterness, suffering, love absurdity, all with equal finesse. Blanca’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? As a ghost, Blanca is able to inhabit others’ bodies and experience their sensations, hear their thoughts, witness their dreams and memories, and even see their futures, making her a near-omniscient narrator. Discuss the author’s choice to give Blanca these powers. How would the story differ if Blanca’s powers were more limited in scope?

Elizabeth Macneal, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Doll Factory Stevens is brilliant at describing desire

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Many thanks to Pan Macmillan, Picador, Nell Stevens, and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review**

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. Eventually, the reader learns that Blanca is not bound to Mallorca, despite having died there and remained there, as a ghost, for hundreds of years. If you were in her shoes, what would you have done? What did you make of Blanca’s decision at the end of the novel? 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." 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 True O'Keefe, Alice (27 May 2017). "Bleaker House by Nell Stevens review – how not to write a novel". The Guardian . Retrieved 9 January 2023.

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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. 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. Stevens, Nell (24 October 2018). "Communing with Mrs. Gaskell". The New York Review of Books . Retrieved 9 January 2023. I don't hesitate to mark 'Briefly, a Delicious Life' as a five-star read. It will be something I'll reread, and have as a fixture in the STAFF RECOMMENDATIONS section of the library.