Briefly, A Delicious Life

Critics Review

• A luscious, multi-sensory bewitchment of a book – Stevens’ writing rings with wit and surprise

  Kiran Millwood Hargrave, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Mercies

• I found myself floored by the astonishing freshness of this historical novel . . . A shining work of art, but so deftfully, gracefully done, that it was a struggle to stop myself from turning the pages. Nell Stevens is an original, whose touch is as deft as it is masterful

  Elizabeth Macneal, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Doll Factory

• Stevens is brilliant at describing desire

  Guardian

• Deeply enjoyable, guileful

  Telegraph

• Dreamy and sensual and life-affirming too

  Financial Times, Best Books of 2022

• Truly original . . . brilliant

  The Herald

• Nell Stevens’s hugely accomplished debut novel evokes a sense both of place and time with a confidence that augurs well for her future career . . . The book is attuned to both contemporary and timeless concerns and grips throughout

  Guardian

• Exquisite . . . Blanca is the story’s heart. She’s a charming, witty character whose vulnerability and occasional gloom make her an irresistible narrator . . . I confess: I cried

  New York Times

• A teenage ghost falls in love with a writer who doesn’t know she exists in this playful, otherworldly debut novel

  Stylist

• A voluptuous delight . . . Like the best historical fiction it is playfully disingenuous . . . the whole book is radiant with life

  Financial Times

• Electrifyingly beautiful, exhilaratingly clever . . . categorically the most gorgeous first novel I’ve read in years. It’s rare that I come across historical fiction so sensual, so original, so intelligent, and so brimming with love

  Imogen Hermes Gowar, author of The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock

• A gorgeous, wildly seductive novel, shimmering with intelligence, humour and joy. I adored this book.

  Sarah Waters, author of Fingersmith and The Paying Guests

• A haunting, dazzling tale of all the good stuff: love, sex, music, literature, death, and what happens after. Nell Stevens is a beautiful writer.

  Melissa Broder, author of The Pisces and Milk Fed 

• A heady yet poignant story about a queer ghost who falls in love

  Vogue

• This deeply wild debut follows the unconventional love triangle that unfolds between real-life French novelist George Sand, her lover Frédéric Chopin, and the teenage ghost who died over 400 years earlier and pines after George from afar.

  Cosmopolitan, Best Summer Reads 2022

• An interesting and absorbing read . . . Highly recommended

  Times of Tunbridge Wells

• Tantalising . . . Stevens is convincing in her portrayal of the haunting nature of desire past and present

  Literary Review

• There are biographies, and there are novels fictionalising real characters, imagining what might happen ‘if’. This one is truly original, as it is a brilliant mix of both . . . Blanca may be a ghost, but her feelings are very real, as are the sights, sounds, smells, and dramas which envelop Sand, Chopin and their family, as they struggle for acceptance, creative freedom and, at times, survival

  i

• A novel of tremulous beauty, sly wit and deep understanding, Briefly, A Delicious Life is an addictive, sunlit delight

  Stuart Evers, author of The Blind Light

• A luminous, beguiling exploration of creativity and love

  Alice Albinia, author of CWEN

• This delightfully weird story of loss, longing and love just begs to fill a rainy afternoon.

  Good Housekeeping (USA)

• Stevens’ prose is by turns languid and visceral . . . An entrancing and singular exploration of a fascinating historical footnote and a queer life after death.

  Kirkus (starred review)

• We know we are curious about the dead but imagine a life lived so vibrantly as to make the dead curious about us. Nell Stevens brings a reader into the strange and brilliant artistic exile of George Sand, writing this tender story with tremendous heart and daring. Here, reader, are the low-lying truths of love, art and time

  Samantha Hunt, author of The Dark Dark

• Stevens’ writing is beautiful and evocative of the Majorcan landscape as she slowly develops the arc of Sand and Chopin’s affair and elucidates Blanca’s life spent in tantalizing anticipation . . . this is a winner with appeal beyond historical fiction readers

  Booklist

• A haunting (in all senses of the word) and evocative magical realist account of creativity and gender, sexuality and inspiration, a ghost story both gothic and beautiful

  The Millions