Attachment (28 page)
For all kinds of help, from readings (and rereadings) to specialist fact-checking and borrowed desks, I am very grateful to Elizabeth Fonseca and Dick Cornuelle, to Katherine Bucknell, Jim Krusoe and Annalena McAfee; to Vera Graaf, Michael Glazebrook and Sarah Lyall, to Nancy Southam and Amanda Moffat; to John Ryle, John Holmes, and Rich Baum; to Elena Fonseca and Caio Fonseca. Thanks to Andrew Motion for permission to quote from his
Philip Larkin: A Writer’s Life
.
I could not be luckier in my editors—Rebecca Carter and Gary Fisketjon. Thanks to Alison Samuel, Publishing Director of Chatto and Windus. Thanks to Andrew Wylie and everyone at the Wylie Agency. Thanks to Liz van Hoose, and to Susan Bradanini Betz, painstaking copyeditor.
London 2008
Born in New York and educated at Columbia and Oxford, ISABEL FONSECA worked at
The Times Literary Supplement,
and her writing has appeared in a wide range of publications, from
The Wall Street Journal
and
The Nation
to
The American Scholar, The Economist
and
Vogue.
She lives in London with her husband and two daughters. Her first book,
Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and Their Journey,
was an international bestseller.
To receive updates on author events and new books by Isabel Fonseca, sign up at authortracker.ca.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.
“Fonseca’s vivisection of matrimony and desire is cruelly exacting.”—
The New Yorker
“An astute observer of human behavior, both real and imagined, [and] a literary heavyweight…Fonseca ultimately transforms the familiar into the foreign, forcing both her characters and her readers to examine their unquestioned perceptions about who they and their loved ones really are.”—Chelsea Bauch,
Time Out New York
“A memorable brilliance.”—
Times Literary Supplement
“Seemingly from nowhere, out pops a searing tale of middle-aged anxiety, so accomplished and pertinent, witty and wise.”
—
The Independent on Sunday
(UK)
“Not only smart but smart in a pleasing and all-too-uncommon way: It’s insightful about grown-ups in the throes of grown-up emotions…Fonseca is commendably clearheaded and unsentimental about the nature of attachment, particularly in long-standing relationships.”
—Adelle Waldman,
New York Sun
“An accomplished debut, full of passion and intelligence.”
—Lisa Appignanesi
“A confident, smart first novel [with] a story that seems personal and deeply felt…Fonseca is especially adept at making middle age look shockingly similar to adolescence [in] all its corporeal and sexual insecurities.”—Helen Schulman,
The New York Times Book Review
“Fonseca’s exploration of middle-aged displacement, both mental and physical, is intelligent, nuanced and immensely satisfying…as fruity and delicious as the cocktails served on the fictional tropical island where it’s primarily set.”—Alexandra Jacobs,
New York Observer
“An acerbic, funny, and maddening coming-of-wisdom novel…Fonseca’s frank takes on sexuality, sexism, age, and how fear undermines love are canny and tonic.”—Donna Seaman,
Booklist
, (starred review)
“A compelling fiction debut…Fonseca’s nonfiction
Bury Me Standing
drew a vivid portrait of the international Gypsy community, and she shifts locales and emotional registers with evocative ease here, delving deeply into her ensemble’s motivations. She’s as unsparing of their flaws as she is frank about their desires…A dramatic demonstration of the limits of attachment.”—
Publishers Weekly
“Fluent, confident and funny…the beauty of the island and the dense undertow of threat are faultlessly captured, so that while wallowing in the lushly atmospheric opening scenes we are plunged straight into intrigue… Only in the last few pages are the original threads picked up again to form a series of impressive twists.”—
The Guardian
(UK)
“It’s a corker…excellent—if you’re over thirty-five and married it’s like someone walking around in your head.”
—India Knight,
The Sunday Times
(UK)
“This is an adult book in all respects, reflecting, with an inquiring intelligence and emotional honesty, on middle age, middling love, sex and death, and the fragility of families in coping with the relentless tow of time and the intrusions of those outside the blood-circle…bold unsettling analyses of the nature of love and what remains after romance.”
—
Time Out London
“She has an expressive turn of phrase and a gift for evoking a sense of place…
Sex and the City
for grown-ups”—
The Sunday Times
“[Written] with wry, disabused humour”—
The Times
(UK)
“Fonseca’s voice is poised, particular, exotic. The novel is about sexual adventuring but in a serious, complicated, high-risk way. In one sense, Jean is playing at being a man, but it is not long before her ventriloquy becomes tawdry to her… Her quest seems more curious than erotic, although Fonseca writes about sex with comic precision…so good and surprising.”—Kate Kellaway,
The Observer
(UK)
“The writing is lucid and sensitive.”—
Sunday Telegraph
“A page-turning dissection of marriage, so convincing in its description. Humorous, poetic, and as life-like as fiction can be.”—
She
Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and Their Journey
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Copyright © 2008 by Isabel Fonseca.
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EPub Edition © APRIL 2010 ISBN: 978-1-554-68914-9
Published by HarperCollins
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Ltd.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC, for permission to reprint excerpts from “An Arundel Tomb” and “High Windows” from
Collected Poems
by Philip Larkin, copyright © 1998, 2003 by the Estate of Philip Larkin. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.S
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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