Gabriele
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
A May 2025 Indie Next List Great Read
“Like Gabriële herself, this book takes on big ideas about modern art and modern life.”—The New York Times
The story of a passionate love affair that triggered a revolution.
An atmospheric, exuberant novel from the best-selling author of The Postcard, Anne Berest, and her sister, Claire Berest, about love and sex, art and revolution, experimentation and creativity, and three young people who changed the world.
The year is 1908, the height of the Belle Époque, and a brilliant, young French woman named Gabriële, newly graduated from the most elite music school in Europe, meets a volcanic Spanish artist named Francis. Following a whirlwind romance, they marry and fall headlong into a Paris that is experimenting with new forms of living, thinking, and creating. Soon after marrying Francis, Gabriële meets Marcel, another young artist, five years her junior. Soon, Francis, Marcel, and Gabriële are all involved in a fervent affair that will change the course of art history and redefine the avant-garde.
As the Belle Epoque gives way to rebellion and revolution, and the world descends into the devastation of World War I, Francis Picabia, Marcel Duchamp, and Gabriële Buffet revolutionize art and open up new ways of seeing and thinking, along the way posing a vital question for their age and ours: what is the connection between new ways loving and new ways of creating?
Moving between Paris, New York, Berlin, Zurich, Barcelona, London, and Saint-Tropez, Gabriële is as audacious, uninhibited, intimate, and unforgettable as its central character, the mercurial, pioneering Gabriële Buffet.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The Berest sisters follow up Anne's The Postcard with a colorful portrait of their great-grandmother Gabriële Buffet-Picabia. In the early 1900s, Gabriële is an accomplished musician studying at the Schola Cantorum in Rome when she's introduced to artist Francis Picabia. "Spellbound," she sets aside her interest in music to marry him and support his career, finding satisfaction in their intellectual bond. Among the luminaries that populate the novel are Marcel Duchamp, whom Gabriële meets and introduces to Francis. They add the poet Guillaume Apollinaire to their circle, and the four lead the burgeoning Dada movement. When a trip to America presents itself as an opportunity to rekindle Francis's career (and boost his mood), Gabriële cannily suggests they make the journey. Back in Europe, Gabriële grows tired of fixing Francis's problems, including arranging for him to work as a driver during WWI to avoid combat, and she even ensures the mercurial Francis keeps up his extramarital affair with writer Germaine Everling. With lyrical prose, the Berests blend historical context with more intimate insights, such as their attempt to understand why the Picabias were cold to their children. Readers with an affinity for early 20th-century art will especially enjoy this.
