Manyebook

All Is Beauty Now

From a breathtakingly mature new voice in Canadian fiction comes an exquisite debut novel of family secrets, divided loyalties, and what we’re willing to do to save ourselves, set against the seductive world of 1960s Rio de Janeiro.

Set in 1963 Rio, Brazil, this mesmerizing first novel follows a glamorous and long-privileged family as they prepare to leave the seeming paradise of Brazil for Canada in the wake of the mysterious disappearance — and presumed drowning — of their eldest daughter a year earlier. As the novel moves back and forth between the members of the Maurer family, we are not only immersed in a unique time and place, but also gradually taken into the heart of a family whose beauty and charm belie a more troubled reality. We meet the family’s brilliant and charismatic father, whose bipolar extremes are becoming increasingly disturbing; his long-suffering wife, who once had a brief affair that proves to have shattering consequences for the family she swore to protect; their two remaining daughters, both on the brink of understanding the darker currents that run in their once-proud family; and the lost daughter herself, a beautiful young woman undone by her own grand delusions.

With settings ranging from the golden beaches of Rio to the squalor of its fishing villages, from the glamour of the legendary Copacabana Club to the austerity of a remote convent, this revelatory novel takes us into the soul of a family already living in the shadow of loss and now poised to leave behind everything they’ve ever known, if only they could make peace with the past.

  • Format
  • hardcover
  • Pages
  • 256
  • Language
  • english
  • ISBN
  • 9780771009334
  • Genres
  • fiction, canada, brazil, romance, adult, family, mystery
  • Release date
  • 2017