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WA British journalist named Joseph Adelaide tracks down an artist who lives in hiding at his remote home in the south of France, with the goal of asking him to cover a magazine story. Edouard Tartuffe is a respected artist who was trained by Cézanne and is known in Parisian art as the “Master of Light”. But then he dropped out of the limelight amid rumors of a rift with his former mentor.
Tartuffe – known as Tata – now lives with his 27-year-old granddaughter, Ettie, who is blind in one eye. Joseph immediately realized that Tata is also very angry and rules his family with an iron fist. When he meets Joseph, he criticizes him for not giving an interview but for his guest to keep one thing: to compare him with a new picture.
Lucy Steeds’ captivating novel is set during a summer in Provence in 1920 when the landscape is bright, the cicadas are humming and “sunlight is coming from the yellow fields”. Steeds’ book is as clear as a documentary as the audience is immersed in the heady smell of turpentine and the pungent aroma of fruit and fish left to rot in the Provençal heat.
The reader is Tanya Reynolds, who hides the secrets of the tyrannical Tata and his removal from the world and space and the gradual depression. Joseph believes that the key to understanding the late artist is the quiet, meditative Ettie, who has lived with her uncle since childhood and is keeping her secrets.
Available via John Murray, 11hr 3min
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