Mirror
Publisher: Faber & Faber, Limited
Published: 2014
Language: eng
Number of pages: 336
ISBN-13: 9780571305070
Subjects: Fiction, general
Description: Venice, 1511. In the convent of Sant' Alvise, a young novice, Oliva, is about to take the veil and become a bride of Christ. When her world is shaken - first, literally, by an earthquake, and then, spiritually, by forces that threaten to change the convent for ever - she begins to question her faith and her future. When she agrees to sit for Signor Avílo, the renowned portrait painter with a sky-blue smock and a provocative manner, he brings with him a diabolical object: a mirror. And reflections can be dangerous.

Erik Satie - composer, dandy, eccentric - is dead. Told he must select a single memory to take with him into the afterlife, he finds himself in limbo with a community of the deceased, listening to ragtime, and looking back at his fifty-nine years on earth for its most precious moments. Evenings of absinthe at the Chat Noir? Friendships with his great contemporaries, Debussy and Ravel, Duchamp and Man Ray? Nights with Biqui, the trapeze artist, love of his life? And what of his great musical triumphs and disasters? His Gymnopédies, his Pieces in the Form of a Pear? How will he choose his own legacy before silent whiteness descends?