Villa E: A Novel [Hardcover]

Elegant and enveloping . . . Ms. Alisons previous work was the critical study Meander, Spiral, Explode (2019), which explored geometric patterns in narrative fiction. Villa E artfully puts those concepts into practice. A stirring meditation on art and the conflicts that engender sweeping change, whether in architecture or painting or fiction, and the ways age turns us inside out, hardening our resentments  the hopeful innocence of Patti Smiths 'Just Kids' viewed through the wrong end of a telescope. Alisons loose lyricism relies on syncopated rhythms and fluid punctuation; she stays on point even as she plays with Joycean techniques. Alison has a talent for conjuring the blanched days and eucalyptus-scented nights of the French coast. An artful imagining of the tempestuous relationship between [Eileen] Gray and Le Corbusier...Villa E will transfix readers. Alison ( The novel explores the characters and lifelong achievements of both figures: he protean, domineering, and unrepentant; she sensual, committed, enduring. Looping, impressionistic, and atmospheric, narrated in retrospect from both characters points of view, the book offers more psychology than plot, but does so persuasively. A remarkable gender parable filtered through a sophisticated imagination. The latest novel from Alison...is itself a kind of spiral...aside from the historical anecdote itself (once described as an act of naked phallocracy), the most interesting aspect of the book is the way Alison represents these two different consciousnesses on the pagetheir slipstream thoughts, both recursive and immediate, but each distinct, pinning their bodies in space. [A] concentrated tale of an epic duel between two temperamentally opposite artists.... In prose, by turns, as exquisite as Eileens creation and as seething as Le Grands lust, Alison incisively evokes artistic genius and angst, while infusing a historic scandal with profound heartache and resolve. In this extraordinary novel, whlÃj