Briefly, A Delicious Life

Sometimes you pick up a book and it is so brilliant, so exquisite, so delicious that you wonder why you had to pick it up, why it was not thrust into your hands and told to just read it. You wonder why more people are not talking about it, why they are not shouting its author’s name from the rooftops, why it is not in the hands of every reader you meet, on the bus, the train, in the library. ‘Briefly, A Delicious Life’ is such a book. The premise is wonderful, the writing is achingly beautiful, and the characters are impossible not to love. I loved Chopin even in his sick-bed childishness; I loved George Sand dressed as a man and smoking cigars; I even loved the children of George Sand, Maurice and Solange, both hungry for love; and the yearning-for-home maidservant, Amelie; and Maria Antonia the cook who robs the family at every opportunity. But above them all I loved the ghost, Blanca, and I loved her and loved her and loved her. Read this book listening to Chopin – at his breathless best. Read this with the smell of cigar smoke in the air. Read this – just read this. It is absolutely brilliant, exquisite, delicious.