Briefly, A Delicious Life

I loved this! For fans of: Lauren Groff's Matrix, slice-of-someone-real's-life fictionalised biographies, the smell of rotting fruit, Longing And Yearning, ghost narrators, precocious children, people being awful to each other, horrible storms, and stories that feel as surprising as they are inevitable.

Thank you to Picador and Netgalley for the ARC!

Briefly, A Delicious Life is a novel about yearning, conventions, and love, as a ghost watches an unusual group come to Mallorca for their health. Frédéric Chopin isn't well, but is in Mallorca with George Sand and her children in the hope of wellness and a simple life. They take residence in an old monastery, where Blanca, the ghost of a teenage girl who died centuries ago, watches them with interest, and falls in love with George, a woman wearing trousers and shirts and shocking the local people. Winter brings difficult times, and Blanca can only do so much to try and help them alongside her usual attempts to protect the women of the town from the men, whilst Chopin writes songs on a substandard piano.

This is a book that is more than its summary, especially if you boil it down to: a ghost falls in love with George Sand and Chopin is ill. The book is from Blanca's point of view, through which you see some of the thoughts and histories of the other characters as well as her own brief life, and it is a strangely fascinating viewpoint, this teenage girl who has now seen hundreds of years and has learnt how to manage love and yearning. The picture of this family, two lovers and the children of one of them, is really shown in its complexities through Blanca's perspective, though you never know if her idea of George is clouded by her sudden love for the woman.

I'm not usually one for historical novels without another selling point, especially not ones about real historical figures, but I love the unique conceit of this one, and it felt almost timeless a lot of the time, possibly thanks to having a narrator who has seen a lot of time. It is fascinating, with a slightly strange ending that changes pace from the rest of the book, but makes sense in terms of the narrative, and especially Blanca's need to watch every detail of the group. A fresh take on queer history, Briefly, A Delicious Life makes a book about a ghost, living life, and types of love something nuanced and intriguing, and not at all what I might've expected.

A brilliant, beguiling, darkly funny tale of a spirited, subversive young ghost called Blanca, outraged that her life was cut short in her prime, determined to enjoy death to the full, who falls in love with the very much alive, cross-dressing writer George Sand.

George has moved her family - two children and her lover, the composer Chopin, to Mallorca, in search of a better climate. Chopin's health is precarious, and George longs for creative freedom, away from the constraints of home.

The odd family "were strangers and strange and strangely insouciant about their strangeness."

Nothing goes to plan.

I loved this!

Briefly, A Delicious Life is a masterpiece. I was so captivated from start to finish. It was like nothing I've read before and it really surprised me positively.

This is the story of author George Sand, and her friend, composer Chopin, and her children, as they spend the winter in Mallorca in the hope that the Mediterranean weather will heal Chopin’s illness (a sort of fictionalised account of their trip to Valldemosa in 1838). It is also the story of Blanca, a girl who died several hundred years before and now haunts the village where she lived and died.

The narrator is Bianca, which allows for the story to be told in a very interesting way - it bypasses the issue of jarring head-swapping by having the girl ‘possess’ (kinda) the characters to understand what they’re thinking and delve into their memories. It’s also a fascinating perspective to read from: a teenage girl who has nonetheless watched generations live and die before her eyes.

I couldn’t put it down. The prose is beautiful in a visceral sort of way, which felt very much in line with the narrator needing to inhabit others’ bodies to feel physical sensations. It is funny - not laugh-out-loud, but the quiet humour of a half-ignored son and a girl who’s seen to much - but also angry, melancholy and absolutely besotted with humanity. There is sapphic longing and rejected gender norms and artistic intensity and so many layers that I’ll need to reread it again (and again) to get to the depths of it.