Little
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- 9,49 €
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- 9,49 €
Descripción editorial
LONGLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD 2020
LONGLISTED FOR THE RSL ONDAATJE PRIZE 2019
LONGLISTED FOR THE WALTER SCOTT PRIZE FOR HISTORICAL FICTION 2019
LONGLISTED FOR THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE 2019
SHORTLISTED FOR THE HWA CROWN AWARDS 2019
A Times and Sunday Times Book of the Year, Little tells the extraordinary story of a singular, diminutive crumb of a servant girl turned entertainment mogul.
'A startlingly original novel' Times
Born in Alsace in 1761, the unsightly, diminutive Marie Grosholtz is quickly nicknamed ‘Little’. Orphaned at the age of six, she finds employmet in Bern, Switzerland, under the charge of reclusive anatomist, Dr Curtius. In time the unlikely pair form an unlikely bond, and together they pursue an unusual passion: the fine art of wax-modelling.
Forced to flee their city, the doctor and his protégée head for the seamy streets of Paris where they open an exhibition hall for their uncanny creations. Though revolution approaches, the curious-minded flock to see the wax heads, eager to scrutinise the faces of royalty and reprobates alike. At 'The Cabinet of Doctor Curtius', heads are made, heads are displayed, and a future is built from wax.
From the gutters of pre-revolutionary France to the luxury of the Palace of Versailles, from casting the still-warm heads of The Terror to finding something very like love, Little is the unforgettable story of how a ‘bloodstained crumb of a girl’ went on to shape the world...
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Plunging into the macabre chaos of 18th-century Europe in this exquisite novel, Carey (Alva & Irva) conjures the life of the girl who would become Madame Tussaud. Orphaned at seven, "Little" Anne Marie Grosholz finds herself in servitude to Doctor Curtius, an emaciated recluse who fashions body parts from wax for medical research. He teaches the clever Marie his trade which she quickly learns, as she'd already developed an early, acute awareness of physiognomy owing to her gargantuan nose and protruding chin. Curtius soon becomes renowned for his wax portrait heads, but when he and Marie must flee to Paris to avoid their creditors, finding lodgings with a tailor's widow and her son Edmond, Marie is banished to the kitchen by Edmond's jealous mother. Marie has no choice but to find allies outside the widow's household, and after a surprise royal visit to Curtius's workshop, she manages to get herself invited to Versailles to tutor King Louis XVI's sister Elizabeth. But it is 1780, and only a few years later the monarchy is overcome by the Revolution. Marie manages to make it home, but the Paris she knows implodes, and her royal associations land her in trouble. There is nothing ordinary about this book, in which everything animate and inanimate lives, breathes, and remembers. Carey, with sumptuous turns of phrase, fashions a fantastical world that churns with vitality, especially his "Little," a female Candide at once surreal and full of heart.
