Pelican Girls
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- 3,99 €
Publisher Description
'Stunning, moving, and remarkable' Nguyen Phan Que Mai, internationally bestselling author of The Mountains Sing and Dust Child
'A celebration of complicity and love among women' Pilar Quintana, shortlisted for the National Book Award, author of The Bitch and Abyss
'I haven't been this swept away by a piece of historical fiction since Maggie O'Farrell's Hamnet' Jess Walter, bestselling author of Beautiful Ruins
Paris, 1720. The Hospice of La Salpêtrière is overrun with 'difficult' women.
Halfway around the world, on the American frontier, French settlers are in want of wives. At the asylum, a list is drawn up: eighty-eight women of childbearing age to be shipped to New Orleans. Among them are Charlotte, Geneviève and Pétronille - a sharp-tongued orphan, an accused abortionist and a rumoured madwoman.
They make the voyage over the ocean, knowing nothing of the harsh and extraordinary lives that await them, or how they will come to love and betray each other time and again in this wild and beautiful land.
Bold, thrilling and startlingly intimate, PELICAN GIRLS is a powerful vision of female friendship, identity and desire, and the choices women make in their unshakeable will to survive. For readers of Barbara Kingsolver, Lauren Groff and The Book of Goose by Yiyun Li.
'A tale of female friendship unlike any I've come across before, Julia Malye's inspired-by-a-true-story Pelican Girls is as incredible a feat of research as it is a daring work of fiction' Elle's Best (and Most Anticipated) Fiction Books of 2024
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
French novelist Malye's epic and nuanced U.S. debut portrays the travails of 90 women plucked from La Salpêtrière, a Parisian asylum, for an arduous voyage to Louisiana in 1720, where they will be matched with Frenchmen to help populate the colony. Among the passengers is Charlotte, an orphan whose only home has been the hospital; the savvy Geneviève, who was committed after she was caught providing abortions; and the largely silent Pétronille, whose wealthy family abandoned her for committing the indiscretion of carrying on an innocent friendship with the family gardener. In Louisiana, having survived scurvy and pirate attacks on the long voyage, Charlotte marries a boat guide, Geneviève a fur trapper, and Pétronille an exporter. The story stretches into the next decade as the women rely on their bonds with each other. After Charlotte is widowed, she moves into Geneviève's house to work as a nanny for her children. Meanwhile, Pétronille again draws ire for an improper friendship, this time with a Natchez woman who tutors her in healing arts. Though Malye's wide lens can sometimes make for an unfocused narrative, each of the three principal characters are richly drawn, and the author displays a formidable grasp on her historical setting. It adds up to a well-crafted story of women finding ways to survive against forbidding odds.
