What do you think?
Rate this book
304 pages, Hardcover
First published July 19, 2022
Chopin began to play. It was something he had begun working on in previous days: a dappled sunlight opening, a break in the clouds, a tentative ray touching the horizon. But the A-flat was running through it now, at first barely noticeable beneath the right hand’s melody, and then louder, increasingly insistent. It became the saddest sound I had ever heard: perhaps you are happy, the music said, and the A-flat, but what about this – this – this. I understood by then that Chopin’s music was the best of him. It was where his loveliness resided. All his better impulses, his tenderness and sadness were there, in safekeeping away from his body, unhampered by the sharp edges of pain and illness, crankiness and frustration and irritability.
“What is desire, without a body to have it in?”
'Other consoling sensations: the rasping tongue of a dog greeting its owner; tree bark against the palms of a young person climbing; the rippling orgasm of a woman who had discovered how to use her fingers for herself; salt on the lips of someone who has been swimming in the sea. I liked to feel the soft, humming fur of a cat being stroked. I liked the taste of wine.'And whose is the titular delicious life? I'd argue for the deliciousness of Blanca's involvement in Sand's life during the years George Sand lives with Chopin and her own two children; the brief life that Blanca inhabits with George and through George, observing her, desiring her, experiencing sensation through her:
'I imagined how it would be to press myself against her, in between her toes, into the crook of her elbow, the crease between her nostril and her cheek, though I never quite dared try. Instead, I placed myself under the wet drip-drip-drip of the clothes on the branches and thought of all that could be done between two women in possession of bodies, what effects could be achieved with fingers and tongues.'As I've said in other reviews, when a novel is published that accurately and fairly represents sexual attraction between women, its importance in and to the book world cannot be overestimated. 'Briefly, a Delicious Life' does that, and does it graciously and genuinely, or generously, or gorgeously, or all of the above.
'I felt a wrench in the silence that followed. There was something about Chopin's music that lodged itself between your teeth - where teeth had been - or slipped through your ribs - where ribs had been - and became a new part of your body - where body had been. There was something about it that gave you a body to borrow, and let you live in it, briefly, extraordinarily.'In this regard, I would say disregard the blurb about 'Briefly, a Delicious Life': phrases like 'emotionally moving' and 'surprisingly touching' fall far short of the mark for Stevens's fiction debut and, in my opinion, 'romantic fixation' is the very last thing I'd identify as its subject matter. The core of this piece of writing is the impact upon the mind of the physical senses, as all of the quotes above demonstrate. Stevens achieves this in a manner that's vivacious, hefty, absolute, not - as the blurb would have it - merely 'charming' and 'original'.