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A Novel
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
A twisty, slow-burn mystery set in Paris and the Netherlands that has become an international bestseller, now in English for the first time.
In 1989, twenty-year-old Marie jumps at the chance to work as au pair in Paris—even though it means dropping out of her prestigious art program in the Netherlands. The city, the language, and the complicated French family she works for all quickly overshadow the turmoil and pain she'd been reckoning with in school. Even as her experiences with the family in Paris begin to echo the troubles left in the Netherlands, Marie pushes on.
Years later, during the 2015 attacks in Paris, Marie is shocked to recognize her former teacher, and the main reason she fled the Netherlands, pictured in the aftermath of the attacks in the exact arrondissement where her previous employers live. The past she was sure she could leave behind comes flooding back, as do the questions she thought she could live with leaving unanswered.
Told in alternating voices, this “highly ingenious” (NRC) coming-of-age story asks important and haunting questions about the thin line between remembering and recording, seeing and being seen, coincidence and fate, revenge and reclamation—and what it means to walk this boundary.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Characters collide, bombs explode, and lives shatter in Dutch art critic Bronwasser's arresting and kaleidoscopic English debut, narrated by a middle-aged woman named Marie. At the heart of the novel is her intense relationship with charismatic photography professor Flo da Silva, whom Marie met as a 19-year-old college student in the Netherlands and fell out with after a catastrophic betrayal. Before diving into the details of what went wrong, Marie flashes forward to recall her time working as an au pair for Phillip Lambert, a largely unremarkable bourgeois Parisian patriarch—save for his strange psychic gifts—whom Marie meets after things end badly with Flo. Eventually, Bronwasser's sinuous narratives converge in contemporary Paris, leading to a (literally) explosive denouement. When it comes to genre necessities like heightening suspense and converting unanswered questions into narrative momentum, Bronwasser delivers the goods, but her approach can feel roundabout, even leisurely, as she trains her eye on larger questions about power disparities, the ethics of contemporary art, and the nature of fate. Dubious readers, rest assured: everything comes together perfectly, like Paris's 12 avenues intersecting at the Arc de Triomphe. Cannily constructed and gracefully written, this thought-provoking literary thriller offers a charcuterie board's worth of rewards.
