Hostile villagers, fearful of contamination from Chopin, do nothing to brighten the picture. She describes with gusto the acute discomforts induced by damp, drippy walls, foul weather, inadequate food, and blood-soaked handkerchiefs. Stevens' depiction of her characters' stay on Mallorca is pretty much the opposite of a delicious life, although it leads to a happy awakening for her queer ghost. a curious mashup of historical fiction, a ghost story, and a queer love story. It is telling that the gloves that protect the composer’s delicate fingers are made of kid. With skill and insight, the novel follows Sand’s struggle to keep hold of her children, her romantic attachments, and her work, and shows that Chopin never faced the same difficult choices. Amélie the maid’s daily trials with this depressed animal are a subplot more striking than the composer’s familiar turmoil and bloody phlegm. Much more than Stevens’s previous books, her novel makes space for the uncelebrated labour on which creativity depends. Instead, she follows the story and what matters to the characters in it.

Stevens is not a writer who worries about mechanics and fidelity to the historical account. Nevertheless it’s jarring when Blanca describes herself as 'neurotic', and it’s unclear why she is not surrounded by other ghosts. Employing an impossible narrator is one way to sidestep the pedantry that historical fiction can fall into. Stevens is brilliant at describing desire.

Briefly a delicious life nell stevens