Half-Blown Rose
A Novel
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- USD 11.99
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- USD 11.99
Descripción editorial
An irresistible story of a woman remaking her life after her husband’s betrayal leads to a year of travel, art, and passion in Paris, from the award-winning author of This Close to Okay.
Vincent, having grown up as the privileged daughter of artists, has a lovely life in many ways. At forty-four, she enjoys strolling the streets of Paris and teaching at the modern art museum; she has a vibrant group of friends; and she’s even caught the eye of a young, charismatic man named Loup. But Vincent is also in Paris to escape a painful betrayal: her husband, Cillian, has published a bestselling book divulging secrets about their marriage and his own past, hinting that when he was a teenager, he may have had a child with a young woman back in Dublin—before he moved to California and never returned.
Now estranged from her husband, Vincent has agreed to see Cillian again at their son’s wedding the following summer, but Loup introduces new complications. Soon they begin an intense affair, and somewhere between dinners made together, cigarettes smoked in the moonlight, hazy evenings in nightclubs, and long, starry walks along the Seine, Vincent feels herself loosening and blossoming.
In a journey that is both transportive and intimate, Half-Blown Rose traverses Paris, art, travel, liminal spaces, and the messy complexities of relationships and romance, with excerpts from Cillian’s novel, playlists, and journal entries woven throughout. As Cillian does all he can to win her back, Vincent must decide what she wants . . . and who she will be.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A woman grapples with love and the emotional turmoil that comes with it in the long-winded latest from Cross-Smith (This Close to Okay). In Paris, 44-year-old Vincent works as an art teacher. She also makes jewelry, entertains friends in a posh apartment, and is embroiled in a love affair with Loup, one of her students. Though her life may seem like an expat's dream, she's there because her estranged husband, Cillian, published a bombshell of an autofictional novel revealing his past relationship with another woman, which involved a secret pregnancy. Now, Vincent emails with Cillian's ex, Siobhan, and Cillian and Siobhan's son, Tully, with whom she unexpectedly becomes fast friends. After Vincent's work visa expires, she is forced to choose between her former life with Cillian and the new one she's built in Paris. Cross-Smith offers a refreshing take on a woman's story of midlife upheaval, but there isn't much in the way of narrative momentum, and Vincent's vacillation between Cillian and Loup ends up feeling like the author is merely spinning her wheels. This has its moments, but it's not Cross-Smith's best.
