A Good Life
A JUNE 2024 INDIE NEXT PICK
Full of humor and compassion, a profound exploration of sisterhood, healing, and the ineffable beauty of life from France's most beloved contemporary novelist
Laughter, tears, the transformative power of love, unexpected revelations, and striking natural beauty: these are the ingredients that combine to make best-selling author Virginie Grimaldi's American debut the feel-good read of 2024. Grimaldi is among France's top ten contemporary authors and her uplifting, unputdownable literary novels have quickly garnered her millions of adoring fans. This, her American debut, is among her most delicately wrought and emotionally compelling novels to date.
Emma and Agathe are sisters. They were thick as thieves when they were young but have always been as different as can be. Agathe, the younger sister, is disorderly, chaotic, and fiery. Five years older, Emma has always been the more mature sister, the defender, the protector, the worrier. Their relationship as adults is scarred by a tragedy that transformed their happy, ordinary childhoods into something much more complex and challenging. For a long time, Emma hasn't wanted to be involved in Agathe's life. But then they must return together to the Basque Country, to the house of their adored grandmother, to empty out her home and in the process to reconcile, to remember, and to pour out what is in their hearts.
The story alternates between Agathe and Emma's childhood and their present day, with everything in between, and readers see them as young girls, teenagers, young women, mothers, wives, partners, individuals, sisters. This is a story that encompasses whole lives, complex lives, women's lives, asking all the while how the scars of the past can be healed and what, in the end, is a good life.
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Virginie Grimaldi was born in 1977 in Bordeaux, where she still lives. She is the author of nine novels and was the most read French writer for three consecutive years (in 2019, 2020, and 2021). Her novels have been bestsellers in Europe and have been translated into more than twenty languages.
For Europa Editions, Hildegarde Serle has translated the bestselling Mirror Visitor series by Christelle Dabos and Valérie Perrin's best-selling Fresh Water for Flowers. She lives in London.
"Grimaldi is a best-selling author in France, and her bittersweet English-language debut is sure to tug at the heartstrings of readers who appreciate moving novels which explore the complexities of sisterly love and mental illness, such as All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews (2014), or Everything Here is Beautiful by Mira T. Lee (2018)." --Booklist
"Virginie Grimaldi delivers her most accomplished, strongest novel. Her best."--Le Parisien
"Grimaldi's concise prose, translated by Hildegarde Serle, 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."--Shelf Awareness
"Chapters rock back and forth like the waves of the ocean...Lovers of Europa Editions' other titles My Brilliant Friend and Fresh Water for Flowers will fall hard for this beautiful, heartbreaking, and healing story. Grab a box of tissues!"--Kelly Justice, Electric Lit
"Refined, sensitive, and full of humor, as always with Virginie Grimaldi."--Cosmopolitan (France)
"An explosion of emotions."--Paris Normandie
"The idyllic Basque setting sits in contrast to the sisters' recalled heartaches but serves as a balm to their sentimental souls as they recall the nurturing affection Mima provided. Translated from French by Serle, Grimaldi's account of two sisters taking stock of what's brought them this far is affecting but smile producing as well."--Kirkus Reviews
