Villa America
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4.6 • 7 Ratings
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
'Immersive, tense, seductive' – Sunday Times
'Unputdownable' – Sunday Express
Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Pablo Picasso, Cole and Linda Porter, Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos - all are summer guests of Gerald and Sara Murphy. Visionary, misunderstood, and from vastly different backgrounds, the Murphys met and married young, and set forth to create a beautiful world. They alight on Villa America: their coastal oasis of artistic genius, debauched parties, impeccable style and flamboyant imagination. But before long, a stranger enters into their relationship, and their marriage must accommodate an intensity that neither had forseen. When tragedy strikes, their friends reach out to them, but the golden bowl is shattered, and neither Gerald nor Sara will ever be the same.
Ravishing, heart-breaking, and written with enviable poise, Villa America delivers on all the promise of Liza Klaussmann's bestselling debut, Tigers in Red Weather. It is an overwhelming, unforgettable novel.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Liza Klaussmann finds inspiration in the life stories of Gerald and Sara Murphy—wealthy Americans whose home in the French Riviera was a refuge for some of the most famous artists of the early 20th century, including Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, Cole Porter, Dorothy Parker and Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Named after the couple’s fabled estate, Villa America is a profoundly moving historical novel. Klaussmann makes every scene sparkle, conjuring a dramatic tale that embodies the idealism, inventiveness and rebellion of a remarkable generation.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Klaussmann's second novel (after Tigers in Red Weather) chronicles a real-life couple whose titular villa was the nucleus of 1920s American social life. After an unconventional courtship that spans Gerald's service in World War I, upper-crust Americans Sara and Gerald Murphy make their home at Cap d'Antibes in the south of France, where Gerald pursues an art career and their frequent summer parties on the Riviera draw much attention. Though Cole Porter, Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, and the Fitzgeralds are guests, the Murphys' favorite is Owen Chambers, an attractive young cargo pilot from rural New England who becomes a fixture in Sara and Gerald's guest house and a close confidant of both Murphys, but especially Gerald, whose relationship with Owen throws his entire life into a tailspin. Propelled by the drama-filled foibles of nearly every prominent lost generation figure a history buff could wish for, Klaussmann's atmospheric prose contains a treasure trove of trivia for fans of the era. Though the central conflicts and emotions are relatively slow to emerge and seem a little buried under lavish descriptions of the Murphys' opulent digs, readers who are looking for a trip back in time will find this an ideal beach read.
