Книги, похожие на «Виржини Депант, Pretty Things»

Dr. Charlotte Highton has fulfilled her grandmother’s dream of a luxury train trip to Venice. But how can she fulfil her final wish – to see Charlotte walk down the aisle?Then, in the narrow streets of Venice adorned with twinkling Christmas lights, Charlotte literally bumps into delectable ex-colleague Dr. Nico Moretti. And amongst the hustle and bustle of St Mark’s Square he drops down onto one knee and offers Charlotte a lifeline… a very spontaneous and temporary one… !

A novel of painting, pretence and the strange ways in which truth makes itself known, from the author of ONE HUNDRED SHADES OF WHITENina’s lost her job, boyfriend and faith in her guru in the space of 24 hours. Unable to tell her parents what has happened, she puts on a suit every day and pretends to go to work.What she’s really doing is escaping to a studio, where she begins to paint for the first time in years. But when her work is spotted by a top gallery owner, she cannot admit she is the painter, and pretends to be the agent instead. Meanwhile at home, she’s agreed to an arranged marriage to keep the peace. There are too many layers of pretence and something has to give way – but at what cost to Nina?This novel is based on the author’s own experience of self-publishing her first novel. To lend it credibilty, she invented Pru, a pushy publicist. Pru went on to be shortlisted for the PPC Publicist of the Year Award, but her cover was blown – it was Preethi all along.

Patty and Walter Berglund were the new pioneers of old St. Paul – the gentrifiers, the hands-on parents, the avant-garde of the Whole Foods generation. Patty was the ideal sort of neighbour who could tell you where to recycle your batteries and how to get the local cops to actually do their job. She was an enviably perfect mother and the wife of Walter's dreams. Together with Walter – environmental lawyer, commuter cyclist, family man – she was doing her small part to build a better world.But now, in the new millennium, the Berglunds have become a mystery. Why has their teenage son moved in with the aggressively Republican family next door? Why has Walter taken a job working with Big Coal? What exactly is Richard Katz – outré rocker and Walter's old college friend and rival – still doing in the picture? Most of all, what has happened to poor Patty? Why has the bright star of Barrier Street become «a very different kind of neighbour,» an implacable Fury coming unhinged before the street's attentive eyes?In his first novel since The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen has given us an epic of contemporary love and marriage. Freedom comically and tragically captures the temptations and burdens of too much liberty: the thrills of teenage lust, the shaken compromises of middle age, the wages of suburban sprawl, the heavy weight of empire. In charting the mistakes and joys of Freedom's intensely realized characters, as they struggle to learn how to live in an ever more confusing world, Franzen has produced an indelible and deeply moving portrait of our time.