Inhoudsopgave:
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This richly imagined novel tells the surprising story of two of Bloomsburyâs most unlikely lovers â John Maynard Keynes, the distinguished economist, and the extrovert Russian dancer Lydia Lopokova. Firebird is the third novel of prize-winning author Susan Sellers, who is also an expert on Bloomsbury and the writing of Virginia Woolf. / Weaving biography and fiction, Firebird explores the tangle of Bloomsburyâs bohemian relationships as lifestyles are challenged and allegiances shift following Lydiaâs explosive arrival. / It is the winter of 1921 and Diaghilevâs Ballets Russes launch a flamboyant new production at Londonâs Alhambra Theatre. Maynard Keynes is in the audience, though he expects little from the evening. Despite Lydiaâs many triumphs, including the title role in Stravinskyâs Firebird, Maynardâs mind is made up â he considers her âa rotten dancerâ. Besides, Lydia has at least one husband in tow and Maynard has only ever loved men. Tonight, however, he is moved by her performance, and when the ballet closes in financial disaster leaving its cast penniless, he invites Lydia to move into his Bloomsbury house. / No strangers to scandalously unconventional liaisons, Maynardâs Bloomsbury friends â Virginia and Leonard Woolf, Vanessa and Clive Bell, Duncan Grant and Lytton Strachey â are intrigued to find the resolutely homosexual Maynard falling for a woman. They assume it is a passing fad. After all, Lydia is a noisy, uneducated chatterbox, while Maynard is a brilliant intellectual whose encylopaedic knowledge and genius for strategy have already made him indispensable to the Treasury. But when Maynard pulls out of a Royal Commission tour to stay close to Lydia, his friends realise they must act. As Virginia writes to her sister Vanessa, everything they value risks ruin from this âparokeetâ whose conversation is limited to âone shriek, two dancesâ. Anything other than a brief affair would be âa fatal and irreparable mistakeâ. Maynard must be rescued from himself. / Vividly recreating Lydiaâs life-changing journey from Tsarist St Petersburg to Jazz Age London via the Paris of Proust and Picasso, this compelling new novel celebrates a love story that is utterly unexpected, true, and stranger than fiction. |
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