Villa America, Liza Klaussman’s follow-up to her 2012 debut Tigers In Red Weather, takes its name from the Antibes home of Sara and Gerald Murphy – the nurturing couple upon whom F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Dick and Nicole Diver are based in Tender Is The Night.
Hardback by Picador, £14.99 (ebook £5.69)
And so, accordingly, this is a novel littered with the glitterati of that time: we watch John Don Passos, Picasso and the Fitzgeralds themselves pass through Villa America as the Murphys create a utopian ideal of America in France, drawing others to them.
It should be made clear, though, that this is a book about the Murphys – beginning with Sara and Gerald as children, exploring the way that their friendship progressed to understanding, then to love, marriage, children, the book is fully fleshed out, which confirms that it’s not just another Jazz Age novel. This is one to read slowly, on a beach in the South of France with sherry in hand.
