In A Good Life, French author Virginie Grimaldi delivers a sensitive, familial love story about the unrivaled, transformative bond of sisterhood. The novel is set in the beautiful Basque countryside, where the adult Delorme sisters, Emma and Agathe, are reunited after a five-year estrangement. The two were forced to come together to spend one last summer vacation at the home of their beloved--now deceased--grandmother Mima. The seaside dwelling, about to be sold, holds dear memories that have anchored the sisters throughout their lives, despite their differences.
During the week shared at Mima’s
house for the last time, the Delorme sisters revisit bygone stories. Short,
evocative chapters render slice-of-life remembrances that take readers through
episodes that defined and shaped the women’s childhood and teenage years—and
probe stories of family and other loves and losses sustained into adulthood.
These enlightening scenes are contrasted against the women’s lives in the
present. They come to discover how Mima and the “good times” they shared via
her influence at the house every summer served to calm and steady them through
the storms of life. The deep challenges that befall the family mark the women’s
identities, personalities, and coping methods. Tensions build in the narrative as
Emma and Agathe ultimately confront each other and tend to the wounds that
drove them apart.
Grimaldi’s concise
pros, translated by Hildegard
Searle, is striking and vivid, painting a sympathetic portrait of the
enduring bond of sisterhood. Readers will fall under the spell of a
compassionately revealed story that blends poignancy and humor in depicting the
transcendental nature of familial love and forgiveness.
A Good
Life by Virginie Grimaldi (Translated from the French
by Hildegarde Searle)
Europa Editions,
$28 hardcover, 288 pages, 9798889660248
Publishing
Date: May 28, 2024
To order this book on INDIEBOUND/Bookshop.Org, link HERE
NOTE: This review is a reprint and is
being posted with the permission of Shelf
Awareness. To read this
review as originally published on Shelf Awareness (May 31, 2024), link HERE
A longer-form
review of this novel was also published at Shelf Awareness on March 26,
2024. Link HERE
to read the review in its original long-form.