Rose Royal: A Love Story [Hardcover]

From the Goncourt Prize–winning author of And Their Children After Them, a devilishly smart noir novella that finds uncomfortable truths in the everyday about romance, violence, and women’s desire and desirability.

Nearing fifty, with a divorce and a string of other failed relationships behind her, Rose has given up on the idea of love, if not sex—though that always comes with risks. Determined not to let another man hurt her, she even ordered a .38 caliber handgun after an argument with her latest boyfriend almost turned violent. Now she carries it everywhere, just in case.
 
As if on autopilot, Rose spends her days at work and then at the Royal, a familiar haunt where she knocks back one drink after another, sometimes with her best friend Marie-Jeanne. And then a sudden accident brings Luc into the bar, and Rose decides to give love one last chance.“[A] taut novella, told in three exactingly written episodes…with depths beyond its page count.” —Publishers Weekly

“This taut work has the power of a fable, with a cautionary moral about the violence lurking beneath every aspect of modern life.” —Rumaan Alam, New York Times bestselling author of Leave the World Behind

“A searing, unflinching portrait of a woman’s life in free fall. Rose Royal is a dark gem.” —Elizabeth Hand, author of Generation Loss and Curious Toys

“Reminiscent of Chopin’s The Awakening, Nicolas Mathieu has delivered a brief, fierce glimpse of lives compounded and compressed beneath the weight of patriarchy, where the control is as often mental as physical and the violence lsK