Villa E, Jane Alison
Villa E, Jane Alison
List: $15.99 | Sale: $11.20
Club: $7.99

Villa E
A Novel

Author: Jane Alison

Narrator: Brigid Lohrey

Unabridged: 6 hr 4 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 08/06/2024


Synopsis

From the author of Meander, Spiral, Explode, an astounding novel inspired by the collision of Irish designer Eileen Gray and famed Swiss architect Le Corbusier.

Along the glittering coast of southern France, a white villa sits atop an earthen terrace—a site of artistic genius, now subject to bitter dispute. Eileen, a new architect known for her elegant chair designs, poured the concrete herself; she built it as a haven for her and her lover, and called it E-1027. When the hulking Le G, a founder of modernist architecture, laid eyes on the house in 1929, he could see his influence in the sleek lines—and he would not be outdone. Impassioned, he took a paintbrush to the clean, white walls . . .

Thirty years later, Eileen has not returned to Villa E and Le G has never left—his summers spent aging in a cabin just feet away. Mining the psyches of two brilliant, complex artists and the extraordinary place that bound them, Jane Alison boldly reimagines a now-legendary act of vandalism into a lushly poetic and mesmerizing novel of power, predation, and obsession.

About Jane Alison

Jane Alison is the author of a memoir, The Sisters Antipodes, and four novels―The Love-Artist, The Marriage of the Sea, Natives and Exotics, and Nine Island―and is also the translator of Ovid’s stories of sexual transformation, Change Me. She is professor of creative writing at the University of Virginia and lives in Charlottesville. Find out more at www.JaneAlisonAuthor.com.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Albert on August 17, 2024

I didn't know the story when I bought the book. The fictionalized account of Eileen Gray's modernist house design in 1929 in Cap Martin and its defacement by Swiss architect and pseudo-artist Le Corbusier had all the potential to tell a great story, but honestly, the narrative was hard for me to fol......more

Goodreads review by Calia on October 29, 2024

I’ve never been compelled to write a review on good reads, but this book was so strange I just had to. And not strange in a good way. The prose was so difficult to track and understand, which is such a shame because the history behind the novel is so interesting. I found only 10-20 pages in total of......more

Goodreads review by Chris on January 05, 2025

3.5 stars. This was an interesting contemporary piece. It had a lot of stream-of-consciousness type writing (similar to Rooney) and was full of clever descriptors that I found satisfying. Aside from the good writing, I didn't find the plot very engaging, but I think that's partly due to my age. Peopl......more

Goodreads review by callistoscalling on April 04, 2024

Thank you @netgalley and @ w.w.norton for the eARC of Villa E by Jane Alison in exchange for an honest review! 📖📖 Book Review 📖📖 Jane Alison gives us the most amazing escape to the south of France, where the blue ocean is unlike any color we’ve ever imagined and the smell of pines amidst rich vegetat......more