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 involves an ill-advised love affair with a monk-in-training).Ĭharming, original, and emotionally moving, this is a surprisingly touching story about romantic fixation and a powerful meditation on creativity. 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.īlanca is enchanted the moment she sees George, and the magical novel unfolds as a story of deeply felt, unrequited longing-the impossible love of a teenage ghost for a woman who can’t see her and doesn’t know she exists. 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. Nell Stevens’s debut novel Briefly, A Delicious Life is undeniably imaginative, but a cornucopia of creativity cannot make up for several large-scale drawbacks. In 1473, fourteen-year-old Blanca dies in a hilltop monastery in Mallorca. An unforgettable debut novel from an award-winning writer: a lively, daring ghost story about a teenage ghost who falls in love with a writer who doesn’t know she exists.

Briefly a delicious life nell stevens