Freeing the Spirit: 'Briefly, A Delicious Life' by Nell Stevens – Book Recommendation

 

Like the lonely and curious spirit who narrates Nell Stevens’s novel, I constantly wanted to look ahead and see what happens in this unusual tale. Blanca is a ghost who haunts the monastery where she died in fifteenth-century Mallorca, aged fourteen. Inexplicably caught for centuries somewhere between life and death, she observes the living, finding she can read their thoughts and see their futures. Her existence transforms as passionate, cross-dressing novelist George Sand and her lover, composer Frederic Chopin, come to stay in the old monastery in 1838. Stevens deftly weaves historical reality with fantasy, exploring the changing dynamics of women’s place in the world through the centuries. Blanca’s bittersweet emancipation through death and vicariously experiencing the lives of others gives the sense that there is still a long way to go. Nonetheless, Stevens emphasises that it is cherished moments in time that make our fleeting lives worthwhile. What books have you read that involve travels in time, or into the minds of others?

Briefly, A Delicious Life by Nell Stevens ISBN: 9781529083446