First published 2001
Zoë Cunningham arrives in Nice to settle her mother's estate after an unexpected death. The Mediterranean city feels foreign despite her childhood memories of visiting here. She must sort through her mother's belongings in the small apartment overlooking the Baie des Anges. The task forces her to examine their complicated relationship and her own choices. Zoë has lived a careful, ordered life in London, but Nice disrupts her routines. She encounters other expatriates and locals who knew her mother in ways Zoë never understood. The sunny facade of the resort town conceals loneliness and disappointment. As Zoë extends her stay, she questions whether to return to her previous existence or forge something new. The process of grief becomes a reckoning with inheritance beyond material possessions. Brookner explores how place shapes identity and whether we can escape the patterns our parents establish.
Genres: literary-fiction, contemporary, family-drama
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, reckoning
Setting: Nice, London, Baie des Anges
Period: 20th-century
345 pages · Hardcover · Thorndike Pr