num_pages: 384
description: An irresistible story of a woman remaking her life after her husbands betrayal leads to a year of travel art and passion in Paris from the award-winning author of This Close to Okay. Vincent having grown up as the privileged daughter of artists has a lovely life in many ways. At forty-four she enjoys strolling the streets of Paris and teaching at the modern art museum; she has a vibrant group of friends; and shes even caught the eye of a young charismatic man named Loup. But Vincent is also in Paris to escape a painful betrayal: her husband Cillian has published a bestselling book divulging secrets about their marriage and his own past hinting that when he was a teenager he may have had a child with a young woman back in Dublinbefore he moved to California and never returned. Now estranged from her husband Vincent has agreed to see Cillian again at their sons wedding the following summer but Loup introduces new complications. Soon they begin an intense affair and somewhere between dinners made together cigarettes smoked in the moonlight hazy evenings in nightclubs and long starry walks along the Seine Vincent feels herself loosening and blossoming. In a journey that is both transportive and intimate Half-Blown Rose traverses Paris art travel liminal spaces and the messy complexities of relationships and romance with excerpts from Cillians novel playlists and journal entries woven throughout. As Cillian does all he can to win her back Vincent must decide what she wants . . . and who she will be.
language: English
title: Half-Blown Rose
publisher: Grand Central Publishing